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WORKFELLOWS 
IN SOCIAL PROGRESSION 



BY TEE SAME AUTHOR 



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WORKFELLOWS 
IN SOCIAL PROGRESSION 



BY 

KATE STEPHENS 



depyiYj ds r ovetBog, 

— Hesiod 

Work is no blame. 

But lack of work a shame. 



flew lorft 

STURGIS & WALTON 

COMPANY 

1916 






Copyright, 1916 
By STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY 



Set up and electrotyped. Published, October, 1916. 



/££ 



DEC 16 1916 



©GI.A44681'i 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Pbologue: Is There Social Peogeession? . . 3 

OuB CouNTEY Newspaper: the Genesis of 
ITS Spieit 19 

Forerunners of Women's Collegiate Educa- 
tion: AND Mary Astell 83 

Uses and Abuses of Two English Words: 
Female; Woman 171 

Plato's Imperishable Epigram: and its 
Trail of Light 217 

Fables of Bronze and Iron Ages: of To-day 241 

"Tobacco Battered and Pipes Shattered 
About Their Ears that Idly Idolize so 
Base a Weed"; by Joshua Sylvester, Puri- 
tan 287 



PROLOGUE: IS THERE SO- 
CIAL PROGRESSION? 



The odd thing is that in spite, or perhaps by vir- 
tue, of his absurdities man moves steadily upwards; 
the more we learn of his past history the more 
groundless does the old theory of his degeneracy 
prove to be. From false premises he often arrives 
at sound conclusions: from a chimerical theory he 
deduces a salutary practice. 

Preface to "Psyche's Task" 

J. G. Feazee. 

The study of history seems to me, of all others, 
the most proper to train us up to private and pub- 
lic virtue. . . . 

I think that history is philosophy teaching by 
example. 

"Of the Study of History" 

BOLINGBEOKE. 

All our hopes of the future depend on a sound 
understanding of the past. 

"The Meaning of History" 
Feedebic Haeeison. 

for the centuries to be. 

Of beauty and simplicity, 

When wisdom, truth, and love shall reign, 

And science slay disease and pain. 

When all the nations shall be blent 
Into one loving parliament, 
When wars are done, and earth shall be 
One peaceful, happy family. 

"The Gates of Silence" 

ROBEET LOVEMAN. 



PROLOGUE: IS THERE SO- 
CIAL PROGRESSION? 

**We are about where the ancients 
were," said a noted critic of life and let- 
ters — neighbor at Harvard University 
of men who delighted to tell of evolution 
from the ** first appearance of rudimen- 
tary nerve systems in creatures as low as 
star-fishes up to the most abstruse and 
complex operations of human intelli- 
gence.'* *'We are about where the an- 
cients were,'' this critic said to me one 
day, *^not advanced, surely. Their writ- 
ers are not approached by any to-day. 
I do not see evolution. In time recorded 
by human writing men have not changed. 
Minds are no closer in grasp nor deeper 
in penetration." 

^*Look at the old-time Greeks," spoke 
up another conservative. ^* Where do 
you find a better mirror of the woe and 

3 



4 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

passion of man than the Iliad? — ^where 
so complete a consciousness of the moral 
law as Sophocles' drama? — ^what so sat- 
urated with knowledge of human nature 
as Euripides ' plays ? — our politicians, do 
they build as framers of Greek constitu- 
tions and workers for the perfection of 
Greek city-states built? — do artists put 
before us such beauty as Pheidias and 
his fellows blazoned in Athens? 

'*What product of to-day is equal to 
that of the mighty minds of old?'' con- 
tinued the conservatives, *^when loftier 
works interpreted alike populace and 
thinker; when the Parthenon rose 
through racQ enthusiasm, race religion 
and race taste; when the pan-Athenaic, 
folk-festival, meant all Greeks of the* city 
of the Golden Grasshopper; when the 
Greek commoner, conserving a corpo- 
rate ideal, sensible of the values of his 
folk legend and preservative of his fore- 
fathers' bequest, found himself embodied 
in his religion, his ethics, his art, his poli- 



IS THERE SOCIAL PROGRESSION? 5 

tics ; when, in fact, wliat he thought and 
did impelled to great embodiments. 

** Consider works of the Latin people," 
the conservatives went on, *Hhe Eo- 
mans, whose calmer minds wrote down 
what life was telling before their eyes, 
until the * Consolations' of Boethius 
rounded into ten centuries the produc- 
tiveness of a war-intoxicated race. 
Since men set down their reflections on 
papyrus and parchment, human capac- 
ities have grown no stronger, no clearer, 
nor have thought and action become 
more directive." 

**This may be true of the individual 
mind," answers to-day's radical. ^*But 
if we have no master-minds in art and 
state-craft, no peaks rising to the SBther 
of unapproached ideal, still general so- 
cial conditions prove evolution. Men 
and their activities are knit closer. 
Sympathy is more universalized ; feeling 
more collective. Democratizing society 
has allowed play of men's social instinct, 



6 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

or turned their impulses into broader, 
more rational channels, and pronounced 
against inefficacious, ephemeral, self- 
destructive individualism. Bound the 
earth people are living on a higher plane. 
The social will may not yet have become 
sufficiently conscious and compelling to 
give us heights towering above the plane. 
Greece was a tiny group held together 
by spiritual qualities, and, in what she 
was not reversive, a prophet for nations 
to follow. The world is not yet a purged 
Hellas which it will become. 

** Human life averages higher than in 
the days of Plato ; and doubtless chances 
of recession are less. Bread, and circus 
and human torture do not assuage now- 
a-days, as they once pacified proletarians 
of imperial Eome — a people degenerated 
by militarism and economic conditions it 
produces, and doomed by oriental in- 
pourings either to eviction from lands 
they had owned and cultivated to a city- 
life of dependence on odd-jobbing and 



IS THERE SOCIAL PROGRESSION? 7 

charity, or to stay by their lands and 
become serfs. The ribald jokes of that 
old city's populace in the years of its 
imperial glory, the people's floating 
stories reported by satirists, would not 
in our day be endured. For the soul of 
the people is higher. And as to con- 
ditions in ancient Greece — ^let us not for- 
get that in Athens, and elsewhere, much 
of the drudgery and benumbing work 
was done by slaves. 

* * The measureless work of the world, ' ' 
continues our radical, **and in saying 
this we do not speak of the devastation 
of war, the appalling destructiveness by 
which the science of war is now impover- 
ishing mankind, but of the quenchless 
pain of the real work of the world — the 
digging of earth; cutting and construc- 
tion of stone and moulding and building 
of metals; traffic of men and travel to 
and fro; raising of crops, cleansing of 
habitations ; feeding and clothing human 
bodies — such daily reparative routines 



8 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

still burden the race's will, healthily at 
times, and yet more often leaving neither 
strength nor freedom for the mind's 
nimble service. Our science, you know, 
declares fatigue a toxin that kills brain 
activity. Eepetitious drudgeries dwarf 
the soul of the people, we say, by dead- 
ening initiative, constructive effort. 
They darken morals, also, for what 
Aristotle wrote is true of all time, *A 
man's constitution should be inured to 
labor, but not to excessive labor, nor of 
one kind only. He should be capable of 
all the acts of a freeman.' 

<< * Wings unfurled sleep in the worm.' 
Certain species of lepidoptera split and 
cast many a skin in passing from early 
larval life — before they reach the con- 
spicuous beauty of 

'the membraned wings, 
So wonderful, so wide, 
So sun-suffused, . . . things 
Like soul, and nought beside.' 



IS THERE SOCIAL PROGRESSION? 9 

By some such process — a crude simile, 
I admit, but let it pass — hy some such 
way men^s associated life may be mov- 
ing, in the pain of its creeping towards 
psychic freedom sloughing off character- 
istics undesirable and destructive for 
human living, and putting in their stead 
characteristics better fitted for brother- 
hood. 

**0r, this merged individuality, this 
social will, may be likened to a glacier, 
pushing onward, crushing, grinding, pul- 
verizing with limitless pain; but as it 
moves clarifying and cooling and giving 
off living waters. Still, in the on-shov- 
ing centuries, even when stunted by wars 
and exhausting labors, it is learning the 
truth with more and more certainty, be- 
coming more and more conscious of right 
and practice of justice. What Wallace 
called the cumulative effects of the ac- 
quisition of knowledge does intermit- 
tingly develop, and then a general ad- 
vance astounds generations and gives 



10 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

an age of marked characteristics and 
marked social progress. 

*^ Inheriting civilizations of centuries, 
we are not merely what Sir William 
Temple, about the year 1690, called us — 
we modern dwarfs, standing on a giant's, 
the ancients \ shoulders, thus seeing more 
and farther than he. William Wotton 
hits nearer the truth: * Comparatively 
speaking the extent of knowledge is at 
this time vastly greater than it was in 
former ages.' And mark the gain in 
breadth and the spiritual results of dis- 
semination since 1694 when Wotton 
wrote this. The way has been long, the 
pace slow, we repeat. But count what 
the soul of the people has won! Social 
ideals, sense of conduct, better codes of 
duty, better codes of virtue. 

*' 'But dig down: the Old unbury; thou 
shalt find on every stone 
That each Age hath carved the symbol of 
what god to them was known ; 



IS THERE SOCIAL PROGRESSION? 11 

Ugly shapes and brutish sometimes, but the 

fairest that they knew ; 
If their sight were dim and earthward, yet 

their hope and aim were true.' 

*^ To-day, with us, this secular, people's 
will is striving through a compelling 
social conscience, the conscience finally 
pushed into a world-force in throes of 
the Great Eeformation — through the 
Eeformers' resistance to pressure upon 
their liberties. Inseparably linked with 
this conscience, also, is the old Puritan 
idea of the commonwealth and its edu- 
cation which would mark off the educa- 
tion that confuses and weakens from the 
education that clears and strengthens 
and would make a new moral world for 
all peoples, and better for this and future 
generations, and wherever they may 
have their habitations, all dwellers of 
the earth. Our democratic, on-sweeping 
will and conscience, our soul of the peo- 
ple, so declares itself — that men and 



12 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

women of future generations, and even 
of to-day, shall have such a common 
weal and shall be more vigorous in 
morals, mind and body, than peoples of 
the past. 

**A strange insight of the seventeenth 
century forecast such possibilities for 
our gift to the world spirit, when Wot- 
ton wrote : ^ So some future Age, though, 
perhaps, not the next, and in a Country 
now possibly little thought of, may do 
that which our great Men would be glad 
to see done; that is to say, they may 
raise real Knowledge, upon the Founda- 
tions laid in this our Age, to the utmost 
possible Perfection, to which it can be 
brought by mortal Men in this imperfect 
State.' 'This,' adds Wotton, 4s what 
one would gladly hope should be reserved 
for his own Posterity and his own Coun- 
try. ' Have we enough of the old Puritan 
spirit to develop such an inheritance 
aright? 

**That we are moving in steady im- 



IS THERE SOCIAL PROGRESSION? 13 

provement and endeavor to make our 
moral progress keep pace with material 
progress is surely not an idle dream of 
optimists — such as Anthony a Wood 
would call ^magotie-headed.' Advance 
in spiritual acquisition, founded on the 
well-directed use and extension of prac- 
tical arts of life, is not a mere vagary. 
Kailways carry Krupp cannon far; but 
they carry steel ploughs and pruning 
hooks farther. Telegraph and telephone 
may have borne messages that shattered 
the peace of the world; but they also 
carry to remotest corners teachings of 
the solidarity and interdependence of all 
earth's people. 

**Even to-day's knowledge and inven- 
tion, and our intelligent utilizing of them 
for human advantage, old seers saw and 
foretold. For instance, Joseph Glanvill 
ventured in 'The Vanity of Dogmatiz- 
ing,' 1661, to say; *I doubt not but pos- 
terity will find many things, that are 
now but Rumors, verified into practical 



14 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

Realities. It may be some Ages hence, 
a voyage to the Southern unknown 
Tracts will not be more strange than one 
to America. To them, that come after 
us, it may be as ordinary to buy a pair 
of wings to fly into remotest Regions ; as 
now a pair of Boots to ride a Journey. 
And to confer at the distance of the 
Indies by Sympathetick conveyances, 
may be as usual in future times, as to us 
in a literary correspondence.' In such 
ways did prophets shine out in past 
generations and hint at the realities that 
forerun our conscious and positive pur- 
suit of social well-being. 

*^And still further afield — centuries 
before Glan^ill — the * Chronicle of Lon- 
don,' so long ago as the year 1203, sug- 
gested such air visitors as a brilliant 
material civilization in 1915 and 1916, 
effected : * There were seyn f oules fleynge 
in the eyre berynge in their billes 
brennyng coles, whiche brenden manye 
houses'; and again in 1221, *at which 



IS THERE SOCIAL PROGRESSION? 15 

tyme fyry dragons and wykkes [wicked] 
spirytes grete noumbre were seyn openly 
fleyng in the eyre.' " 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER: 
THE GENESIS OF ITS SPIRIT 



Yet still the New World spooked it in his veins, 
A ghost he could not lay will all his pains; 
For never Pilgrims' offshoot 'scapes control 
Of those old instincts that have shaped his soul. 
"Fitz Adam's Story," 
James Russell Lowell. 

The little county paper 

From the old home town, ah me, 

Has anybody died this week? 
Let's open it and see. . . . 

The editor is lazy and he don't get round much more 
To gather up the items at the blacksmith shop and 

store ; 
But here are all the funerals, and the marriages are 

told 
In simple old-time sweetness of an English style of 

gold. . . . 

It hasn't much pretension and it's still the same old 

thing 
It used to be when childhood filled the world for us 

with spring. 
But how we watch and hunger for the little sheet 

to come 
Each week from Homely Corners where so many 

friends are dumb. 

The little county paper, 

Oh, a welcome friend it is. 
With all its quaint old gossip 

Of a sweeter world than this! 

"The Little Country Paper," 
FoLGEB McKinsey in the Baltimore Sun. 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER: 
THE GENESIS OF ITS SPIRIT 

Our people who had the courage to 
pioneer in this country and form their 
government after their race institutions 
had a certain inborn spirit. When they 
made these United States and invited 
over the less fortunate of the world to 
share their good with them, we say, fore- 
fathers and f oremothers of ours kept an 
essential of theirs already enshrined in 
their race customs, traditions, language 
and literature — democratic, local, self- 
government. 

That self-government was funda- 
mental in inhabitants of Britain nearly 
two thousand years ago, Julius Caesar is 
witness. In the year 55 b.c, about the 
26th day of August, having sailed from 
Port Itius in Gaul, now Boulogne in 

19 



20 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

France, Caesar landed Roman legions on 
that snug island off the continent of 
Europe where, in coming generations, it 
was fated our English stock and English 
speech should evolve. * * He thought, ^ ' he 
wrote, *4t would be well worth his while 
merely to visit the island, see what the 
people were like, and make himself ac- 
quainted with the features of the coun- 
try, the harbors and landing places. ' ' 

This was not all the shrewd and am- 
bitious Eoman purposed, however. He 
sought popularity at home, the then 
great capital and military centre of the 
world, by conquest of the natives of 
Britain, peoples celebrated, even in that 
day, for their fierce love of freedom — 
obdurate esteemers of liberty before all 
other possessions. To such men and 
women, enraged and horror-stricken, 
assembled near the flat shore and open 
beach between present-day Walmer and 
Deal, Caesar set forth his heresy of im- 
perialism, his principle of authority 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 21 

centring at Eome — ^the glory to the 
swarming islanders in having the head 
of their government at the capital city 
of Italy. In that imperial town their 
chief, a Roman, should dwell, and he and 
his Eoman advisers should govern them 
— alien, northern Britons that they were 
— ^in all conditions of life and death. 

The raw islanders would none of his 
offering. They preferred home-bred 
rulers and home-bred freedom. And 
when CsBsar finally drew up his legions 
to enforce his authority centring at 
Eome, unnumberd Britons died in battle, 
and others outright killed themselves, 
rather than bow the knee to Eoman as- 
sumption. But strength of arms won, 
and the island in large part became a 
Eoman province. 

Through many years imperial gov- 
ernors and legions held subject liberty- 
loving Britons. Bloody wars, exhaust- 
ing taxes, mutilation and starvation of 
the body, every heinous means of reduc- 



22 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

tion and destruction a gross, material- 
istic power visited upon those would-be- 
local-self-governors. An individual, a 
man or woman, counted not a souPs or 
a body's worth, if only the imperial will 
prevailed. Yet, some two hundred years 
after Caesar's proclamation of conquest, 
Hegesippus wrote, '^Britons never will 
be slaves'' — ^his exact words were, 
^^Britanni quid esse servitus ignorabant, 
soli sibi nati, semper sibi liberi." Cen- 
turies again passed. The island called 
other peoples across seas that wash its 
fair shores. The new comers settled and 
an amalgamation of bloods followed. 

Over in Rome the state was dying of 
its imperial megalomania. Still, the 
idea itself seemed not yet ready for ex- 
tinction ; and it set up an imperial order 
in relations of the spirit of man to 
eternity. The Christian community 
centring at Eome, that is, gradually 
grafting the mild, mystic, individual 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 23 

teachings of Jesus upon pomp and ritual 
of the old Roman religion and imperial 
Roman organization and administration, 
became not content solely with other- 
worldly preachings, but proclaimed the 
sovereignty of their overseer, or bishop, 
over all earth's people. So early as the 
second century the tale was broached. 

To English peoples a result of this 
Roman claim was that with their accept- 
ance, in the seventh century, of simple 
precepts taught under Syrian skies, and 
with their delight in fragments of the 
Gospels and Prophets translated from 
the Latin into their own rude tongue, 
they perforce took Roman tradition and 
zeal for imperial organization and au- 
thority centring at Rome. This accept- 
ance meant to the disrupted races of the 
island a temporary abrogation of their 
instincts. But in the secular process 
with which the collective mind, the social 
spirit, the justice of God pushes onward. 



24 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

they finally evolved a government — ^with 
which the better systematized and more 
stable church united. 

In those days learning was in the keep- 
ing of the church. Chronicles of the 
time tell of dominating king and strong 
noble, priest and monk. Karely do they 
mention soil-dwellers — carl, villein and 
simple, unpretentious commoners. Look 
far in the writings of such imperialists 
and you find little indwelling, heart- 
warming, democratic fellow-feeling with 
the folk, the estimate of the human 
creature as a sole and complete unit 
working out his individuality in this life 
and needing at least a modicum of fructi- 
fied, fulfilled desires this side his grave. 

Nevertheless the idea of democracy, 
self-government, still abode in that folk 
of rugged English speech. All peoples 
are democratic in their beginnings. 
The difference between the democracy of 
English stock and others is that, in spite 
of absolutism supervening, in spite of 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 25 

such hindrances to its expansion as a 
secular aristocracy preserved by primo- 
geniture, from us the spirit can not be 
torn out, so deep in our nature run its 
roots. 

In this fixity, this radication, we find 
why democratic ideals inspired Eng- 
land's government through centuries, 
when state-paid preachings of the value- 
lessness of the people retarded evolution. 
Throughout hundreds of years, when the 
church which might have been a benef- 
icent tribunal was hardening into a 
rapacious, intollerable tyrant, the Eng- 
lish commons comforted themselves as 
did a mouthpiece of theirs. Preacher 
John Ball, of the fourteenth century, 
who, says an old chronicler, * 'began a 
sermon in this manner: 

''When Adam dolve and Eve span 
Who was then a gentleman? 

And continuing, ' ' says the chronicler, 
**he sought to prove that from the begin- 



26 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

ning all were made alike by nature, and 
that bondage or servitude was brought 
in by unjust oppression of naughty men 
against the will of God." 

All such pleas for liberty as this we 
have just cited have been smouldering 
fires of the people 's spirit — fires covered 
at times, as the Normans declared the 
Saxons' should be — ^but bound to seek 
the face of heaven wherever, in the race's 
evolution, its offspring might settle to 
pass their life-cycle of labor and love. 
Wherever any chance-usurping power 
might strive to curtail its individual 
liberty, this native, would-be-self -govern- 
ing-and self -ordering democracy of our 
stock has been apt to warm to wrath 
with a star-of-the-morning in hand, or to 
volley its indignation in arrows, or pikes, 
or muskets, or rifles to regain the liber- 
ties of the English people, which, even 
in Elizabeth's day, writers spoke of as 
**antient." And upon whatever land 
our race has taken root, democracy, re- 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 27 

gard for tlie individual being, has sprung 
in the institutions of the soil and dwelt 
there. The idea seems to be in us, an 
essential factor of our race subconscious- 
ness. 

In early comers to America this devo- 
tion to the democratic idea was strong. 
That the infarers were a human unit, 
trammeled by no social forms except 
those that had brought and welded them, 
dwelling upon a virgin land mysteriously 
stretching its fragrant forests beyond 
their exploring eye, increased such con- 
victions. They were fresh for the effort 
of working out mighty ideas and pushing 
those ideas into human evolution. They 
had left the old home with the winds of 
the Great Keformation still cleansing 
England's air, and when the Puritan 
ideas of a commonwealth were stalking 
abroad and in daylight. Habit of revolt 
and stand for individual freedom had 
become a part of their natures. A sense 
of isolation born of the habit of opposi- 



28 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

tion had already stoicized, freed from 
littleness and uplifted their souls. 

But again we have to turn back, and 
this time to the seers and learned of a 
Semitic people dwelling thousands of 
years ago in a land east of the Mediter- 
ranean, who had set down the values of 
the agricultural life. Their estimate 
went into one of the greatest books the 
world has ever read — a seminal book for 
soil-tillers, the Bible. 

And now, in the seventeenth century, 
in this America, when the Puritan ideas 
of a self-governing commonwealth were 
abroad aihong the people, the sonorous 
voice of the old Semitic writings, their 
estimate of the soil-dweller, played a 
master part.^ For the colonists of our 

1 The self-governing instinct of the English people 
had demanded translations of the Bible into their 
own tongue after their acceptance of Christianity, 
and after the time of Bede many fragments were 
rendered. Such works, dating from the ninth cen- 
tury, still exist. But Wycliffe in the year 1382 
finally brought the entire Bible to English speech, 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 29 

Atlantic slope, besides inheriting the love 
of individual liberty of their birth-land, 
had seized upon and were worshipping 
the records in which the ancient Semitic 
folk, exultant in having a soil on which 
to dwell, had inscribed their living. 

Our colonists knew that conditions 
about the Hebrews of old and themselves 
had somewhat of identity — at one time 
wanderers without a home, would-be 
soil-dwellers seeking an abode, strong in 
faith and courage and community of in- 
terests, each with an undeveloped genius 
for bringing ideals to the world's better- 
ment. These later colonists had, too, as 
Jeremiah tells of Israel, gone after the 
Lord **in the wilderness," *4n a land 
that was not sown." To found a theo- 

when manuscript copies of parts of the work were 
multiplied and eagerly bought. Then, after printing 
came into use, Tyndale's and Coverdale's, and others' 
versions, made the folk familiar with their pages 
eighty years before the landing of our Pilgrims. The 
Bible in its English dress, let us not forget, entered a 
world where theology and its reformation were of 
chiefest interest. 



30 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

cratic commonwealth was a great pur- 
pose of theirs here in America. A God- 
ruler of like conception to the old 
Hebrews' was to be their mystic head, 
and manifest vessels of his grace the 
guiders of their commonwealth's affairs. 
Thus our early American forefathers 
brought the old, concrete-minded He- 
brews' book to inhospitable shores and 
fed themselves upon its manna. Those 
stiff-necked, self-sacrificing, self-deny- 
ing, little-asking forefathers and fore- 
mothers of ours, in the blue and white of 
whose nerves and the red of whose blood 
was still vibrating love of liberty, love 
of the loc^l-self -government that CsBsar 
found ancient Britons and other north- 
ern peoples ready to die for, and to suffer 
more than death for — the liberty which 
the imperial Roman idea, whether of 
state or of church, had never been able 
to kill out — that people, with such an 
inheritance, took the informing soul of 
the old Hebrew scriptures into their 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 31 

lives with the fervor that one people 
will sometimes seize another's exalta- 
tion. 

In these colonists' view the Bible was 
holy of holies, the veritable voice of God. 
When, in the narrowness and material 
comfortlessness of their lives they held 
the book in their hands and with rever- 
ence undid its leathern covers, they found 
in its theocratic spirit governing all de- 
tails of life a breadth of vision that en- 
compassed the world. It opened before 
their eyes heights of human aspiration, 
and its simple, penetrating message 
searched the depths of every human 
heart. Countless of its precepts balmed 
their ills. For did they not own all that 
men needed to order themselves and their 
affairs in this world and for the world 
to come? No longer were their souls 
comfortless. 

The Old Testament, its simplicity, its 
concreting of values, the high philosophy 
of a part of it, bore to the Puritans espe- 



32 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

daily an ideal of life. In their instinc- 
tive democracy they turned to records of 
the heroic age of Israel, the generations 
between Abraham and David, to those 
days when 'Hhere was no king in Israel 
bnt every man did that which was right 
in his own eyes,'' and to the later theo- 
cratic organization after the Captivity 
when a court or synedrium and high- 
priest governed Judaea, when laymen 
gathered in synagogues to read sacred 
writings and talk over their interpreta- 
tion. Aside from these Puritans no 
moderns have taken into their own lives 
the stern sincerity and contempt for ma- 
terial prosperity, the fervor for the 
moral law tfiat informed the prophets of 
that ancient people. 

Upon the curving hills and amid the 
forests of their new world these inf aring 
colonists upbuilt an English Israel. 
Many a New England farmer, housed in 
greying timbers upon some wind-swept 
height, worked the soil of his few acres, 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 33 

lived his elemental life and dignified his 
sorrows and joys by his conviction of 
their likeness to men's of holy writ — the 
affliction of Jacob, the triumph of Jeph- 
thah, the faith of David, the grief of Job, 
and the three types of friends zealous 
in comforting, pictured for all time, 
Bildad and Eliphaz and Zophar — ^his 
course made possible solely by the men- 
tal resourcefulness and untiring indus- 
try of a most marvellous *' help-meet," 
his wife. The family itself, and similar, 
neighboring families, formed an auton- 
omous unit. 

These people of the New World knew 
that the old Hebrew prophets were the 
Puritans of their times and people — ^to 
be a prophet was to be a Puritan. They 
knew that the inspired might be a simple 
soil-tiller. So in this later life of theirs, 
the New England farmer needed no 
special nor artificial training to exalt 
him to the service of his deity — ^to be a 
Puritan was to be a prophet. Twice 



34 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

each day, needing no priest, separated 
from divinity by no vail he read to his 
listening family of thq people led by 
Moses and face to face with the Al- 
mighty. Self-instructed and self-con- 
secrated, he was oftenest like the moral 
reformer, Amos, of old, **a herdsman, 
and a gatherer of sycamore fruit, ' ' whom 
the Lord took as he followed the flock 
and said, **Go, prophesy unto my peo- 
ple. ' ' He might not be a poet in expres- 
sion, as the Hebrew, but he was a poet 
in soul; a thinker and ready to exhort 
against voluptuousness — that the chosen 
people might hear the word the Lord 
had spoken. Sometimes, like the elder 
Jacob, he combined religious fervor with 
a shrewd and crafty individualism. 
Conditions taught him. In consonance 
with the physical atmosphere of his New 
England, sternness and severity were 
his mental and emotive climate. To gain 
subsistence he had cleared his soil of 
forests with unmeasured toil, ears quick- 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 35 

ening to hear the approach of a de- 
stroyer ; and he had learned that axe and 
saw ring finest when they strike the clos- 
est knit and most enduring timber. 

*'Who would true valor see, 

Let him come hither ! 
One here will constant be, 

Come wind, come weather: 
There's no discouragement 
Shall make him once relent 
His first avow 'd intent 

To be a Pilgrim. 

** Whoso beset him round 

With dismal stories, 
Do but themselves confound; 

His strength the more is. 
No lion can him fright ; 
He'll with a giant fight; 
But he will have the right 

To be a Pilgrim." 

Solitariness was his lot. *^The king- 
dom of God is within you." -Esthetic 
symbols ensnared approaches to the 
Divine, for, to such a religionist, when 



36 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

attention to material forms entered spir- 
itual religion took wing. Eitual was 
desecration. 

And each neighbor of his, we say, 
suffered the same contagion. Their 
Master was about to come. Goodness, 
justice should reign, and a righteous 
world at last be theirs. They knew not 
the day or hour Triumph might glori- 
ously appear, perhaps in a month, a year 
— so much was fulfilling the prophecy — 
surely in the not far-off future. 

Such was their faith and estimate of 
values. A severe, narrow existence it 
mightily sustained. Among those dwell- 
ers, in this life they led — in no other 
by any possible pretence — grew that 
** American conscience'' which has been, 
and still is, a dominant moral power 
round the whole earth — that American 
conscience of which the warring states 
of Europe sought, in 1914, '15 and '16, 
the approval. 

The great book, again, was at one with 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 37 

the agriculturalism to which the people's 
lives were constrained. In its report of 
the living of the elder people of the 
Covenant, its estimates were often of the 
real, primal things of life — so genuinely 
part of the terrestrial passage of man 
that terrestrial passage is not without 
them. This fact squared exactly with 
intense belief in elementals of daily life 
that has characterized our English- 
speaking peoples' strength and democ- 
racy — ^their inheritance, we have said, 
from peoples who had the trait before 
they had heard of the Bible, who were 
distinguished by it before the Bible was. 
Heirs of this spirit, when once they had 
grasped the book, they did not lose its 
bed-rock for human living. 

Birth of children, the life-events of 
nearby dwellers, ploughing, planting, 
harvesting, cattle-tending, the pursuit of 
goods enough to live wholesomely, the 
final debt we owe to the laws of nature, 
and always and everywhere service and 



38 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

helpfulness to our neighbor — this was 
the sum of the moral life as their democ- 
racy saw it. This was the real triumph 
of the individual, the best product of 
duty for one's self and duty towards 
one's neighbor. 

Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the 
son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai 
his daughter-in-law, his son Abram 's 
wife; and they went forth from Ur of 
the Chaldees to go into the land of 
Canaan ; and they came unto Haran, and 
dwelt there. And again Abram took 
Sarai his wife and Lot his brother's 
son, and all their substance that they 
had gathered and the souls that they had 
gotten in Haran, and they went forth to 
go into the land of Canaan ; and into the 
land of Canaan they came. 

These elder families, their souls got- 
ten, their substance, their migration, 
were worth note in the most sacred and 
spiritual book the Puritan people knew. 
That book should serve also to register 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 39 

souls born of their own. It should 
record the great trinity — ^birth, mar- 
riage, death — of each Puritan offspring 
— a progeny strong, valiant, confident, 
conquering, settling in Merrimac, Con- 
necticut and Mohawk valleys; again 
democratized in bands of dauntless, ad- 
venturous, plodding pioneers trailing to 
the broad Canaanitic bottom-lands of the 
Ohio and Missouri; or, infused with a 
flexible modernity and facing the further 
difficulty and danger of trekking in wind- 
jamming prairie-schooners towards the 
Willamette ^s flood and the Golden Gate. 
In many races a first use of writing 
was in family annals, for instance among 
the early Greeks and Irish, in records on 
tombstones. The Bible's chronicling is 
a complete example, both as the book 
stood in its ancient form and in practical 
uses among our English-speaking Puri- 
tans. In those days, when the people 
forming the colonies had broken from 
the old home and church dominion, the 



40 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

Bible was their holiest possession. It 
should be their family register. Their 
reasoning was natural, inevitable, in- 
deed, through need of the exact registry 
that loosely knit church and state did 
not keep. Of all places open to their 
need for record that was the most abid- 
ing. Those practical theorists were 
unconscious of what their reasoning 
gained through their religious satura- 
tion. Their justification was in the 
records of the Bible that chronicled the 
worth of human lives, gotten and seeking 
domicle, and in concrete phrase wrote 
down a husbandman's spirit. 

Thus .our *^antient-liberty' Moving 
f oreparents nursed their human interests 
and kept their human records. The 
generations making their entries lived in 
the faith that they were the heirs of the 
early folk and beloved of the Lord. 
Yellow sheets in the holy book of every 
family conserving such treasures follow 
the Old Testament pages. Time-saf- 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 41 

froned leaves, we say, blank save for the 
faded ink of family entries, set forth, in 
the uneven script of the hand unused to 
the pen, material and speaking evidence 
of the truth here bespoken. The very 
act of inscription witnessed their belief 
that they were a chosen people, a con- 
tinued Israel. Not only certain of their 
mental habits, often their given names 
were from the old Jews — those Jews, we 
repeat, whose family records foreran 
their family records in the binding of 
the book. The Old Testament had 
gripped them more firmly than the New. 
Thus our Puritans, extending their 
love of local self-government, the in- 
stinct for state-building that had char- 
acterized their English forebears, and in 
their constant reference for ordering 
their affairs multiplying the simple cul- 
ture of the great book they sanctified by 
their worship, — thus the Puritans went 
on accomplishing their mighty work for 
the human spirit, and towards the end of 



42 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

the centuries they had distinguished by 
their social progress, one of the hand- 
maids of self-government — movable type 
— sought popular distribution. A sig- 
nificant history lies in the fact that the 
first book printed in movable type was 
the Bible ; and also in another fact, that 
the people indelibly marked by the 
Bible *s teachings were the first to make 
the type their everyday servant. 

When the distribution of this type 
was completed and put at hand means 
for speedy printing of records, country 
newspapers gradually sprang from the 
social soil of our American village and 
town. A people democratized, inasmuch 
as they had proved to all the world that 
their conscious progress was through 
free self-government, were secularizing 
and confirming their faith in a hereafter 
of ideal justice by endeavor to bring, so 
far as humanly possible, equity to life 
upon this earth. 

Not so often now did family-annals, 



I 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 43 

written in the old-home Bible, in its 
blank leaves twixt Old Testament and 
New, seem a nisi qua non. Those self- 
governing state-builders took the right 
not only to secularize their own family 
records, but also to deliver to their local 
press legends of neighboring patriarch 
and matriarch — to write simple annals 
of whatever good and ill might come to 
every hearth whose blue smoke upcurled 
in fragrant morning air and whose door 
opened upon a green sward. 

No pretence defaced such newsmonger- 
ing. Faith in the human being and lo- 
cal pride were its base. Its all-inclusive- 
ness forbade snobbery. Spiritual needs, 
economic needs and social needs lay still 
in lines as simple as those of the early 
people. And especially when our Civil 
War came, and every community 
marched forth its little band of brothers 
for the front, and dire news flashed over 
the wires after battles, and sympathy 
for another ^s loss quickened and united 



44 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

all the neighborhood's people, a voice 
must be at hand to tell the pride and pain 
of every dweller. Each settlement must 
have its newspaper and every man and 
woman be its reader. 

In such ways as these it happened that 
the country newspaper and its personal 
columns — ^which are the surging, purple 
life-stream of its spirit — finally came to 
voice country habits and habitudes; the 
humanity that burgeons in a community 
which takes on permanence; the folk- 
humor that digs another in the ribs ; the 
willing ear for another's sorrow or joy; 
the helpfulness embedded in our hearts 
toward those less fortunate than our- 
selves. 

Thus our country newspapers became 
unconscious records, perhaps to-day the 
sole records not self-conscious and hav- 
ing to the student the interest of uncon- 
scious speech. They are a simple order- 
ing and organization of friendly neigh- 
borhood news — ^not unlike that Froissart 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 45 

delightedly received when *Uhe squire 
drew me apart into a corner of the 
chapel/' or such as the Mermaid Tavern, 
and London coffee houses of later cen- 
turies, purveyed — such as forebears of 
us Americans heard at the turnstile be- 
tween fields yellow with grain and scarlet 
with poppies, or at the post-seat of a 
cross-road, at the town-pump and foun- 
tain, or at the cornerstone of the farm, 
or resting on the old settle of the wayside 
inn, or at a raking of hay, or press of 
cider, or full-moon corn-husking, or early 
spring "sugaring-off"; or, again, at 
those points especially warming to 
tonguey gossip — ^the neighboring tavern 
and country-store — and also to-day's 
town club. 

For portraiture the papers' columns 
are of unexampled worth. You and I 
have never seen Cherry Vale, nor Willow 
Springs, nor Vinland nor Eudora. 
Neither kith nor kin of ours dwell in 
those groupings nestled close to Mother 



46 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

Earth and strengthened by the electric 
current pulsing under her leafage.^ Yet 
good it is to hear this end-of-the-week 
news: 

Ira Rothrock hulled 57 bushels of clover 
seed last Saturday, which breaks the record 
for one day's work in these parts. 

Lloyd Duffee has received the nomination 
for county surveyor. Success to him. 

The Library supper was quite well attended 
last Wednesday evening though the threat- 
ening aspect of the weather together with bad 
roads, seemed to keep a good many at home. 
The supper was a bountiful repast, and very 
appetizing. Six huge chicken pies graced 
the tables. Their odor made one's mouth 
water as the knife penetrated them. 

J. Hammond lost a good horse last week — 
one of his greys. 

Ross Hughs, the road boss, got a horse and 
buggy last Sunday and went to see his best 

1 Thousands of years ago the faith pertained that 
those who slept on the ground drew oracular wis- 
dom from Earth. Homer, in the Iliad (xvi, 234), 
ascribes such power to the Selloi, original dwellers 
at Dodona, guardians of the oracle of Zeus : 

'afi<l)l dh 2eXXo2 
Sol valovs* viro(pr}Tai dvnrrSirodes X'^A'ci^ci'^tt*' 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 47 

girl. He says his best girl is his mother. 

There was quite a number out at prayer 
meeting Sunday night. 

Grandma Davis was calling at George Gil- 
ley's last week. 

Most all the farmers are sowing wheat 
again this year. 

We are glad to report that Miss Nora 
Metsker is giving general satisfaction in her 
teaching No. 4 school. 

The wedding bells will soon peal forth their 
merry chimes in the east part of Vinland; 
so boys, keep your eyes open. 

The Simmons boys hauled their apples to 
Eudora last week. 

Otto Durrow is digging a well for G. M. 
Norton. If anybody on earth can find water 
in the bowels of the earth, it is Otto Durrow. 

The Republican primary at Willow Springs 
last Friday was well attended. William Mar- 
shall was nominated for township trustee ; Les- 
ter Flora for clerk, and Daniel Heuston for 
treasurer. 

Fred. Rumsey has been quite sick with ma- 
larial fever, but is now able to sit up. 

Mrs. Dr. Evans will go to her parents for 
a visit to her childhood home in Vermont. 

Misses Nettie Stone and Flora Gibbons 



48 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

spent the day with Miss Maggie McClanahan 
Sunday. 

The boys say Harry Roe is building an ad- 
dition to his house, and they are sure he will 
need someone to help him take care of it. 

Your correspondent will plaster Mr. Mur- 
phy's new house this week. 

What suggestions of human interest 
and pride in country quiet! To such 
items ninety-nine in every hundred 
readers turn when the paper comes to 
the family living-room. Now and then 
a man first seeks report from the market ; 
but he excuses his peccadillo by the claim 
that he wants to know *' quotations for 
steers on the hoof." 

The housemother finds reinvigoration 
in such delightful columns. They bring 
her near other patient adjusters whose 
lives round, in lack of mental stimula- 
tion, with her own. Days with her, the 
everyday-of-life things, are apt to be a 
treadmill, the giving of self to issues 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 49 

petty in their being and tremendous in 
the bearing, to the wants of the helpless 
in infancy and age, and to the infinite 
work of child development, in short, the 
giving of herself to homemaking. And 
this when before her eyes the hand of 
God, brushing the skies with color and 
pouring liquid light on field and shrub 
and tree, beckons her outside her door. 
To lives so circumscribed the neighbor- 
hood paper comes as a tonic, a recon- 
ciler to a narrow lot. 

The confining quality of their work, 
we say, whets women's appetites for 
companionship and increases their zest 
for neighbor news. All offspring of the 
great Pan yearn to be with their kind — 
shut a large-winged moth in a summer 
room, and soon you will find its compeers 
clinging to the window screen; clever- 
witted birds seek one another, so duller 
sheep ; a horse must neigh to his fellow, 
and even the puma will not be solitary. 



50 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

Likewise we human children of Pan, 
especially those of us shut off, are a- 
hunger for social converse. 

The men's line in life has in it satis- 
fying friction of soul against soul. 
Obedient to it they move in the world's 
spaciousness and contact with neighbor. 
Driving in it enlarges and fills out their 
minds, brings them in touch with the 
manifold, refreshes by communion with 
the general life. Not so the women's. 
The food for their spirit is, after their 
own gleanings, mainly self-evolved, 
created in the depths of their inner life. 
Of our ancestors ' use and worship of the 
Old Testament we may not say the book 
helped free each life of the people. The 
Great Writ liberated the men. It did 
nothing to deny a ruling preserved from 
the ancients — the supremacy in the 
family of a father however bad and 
treasonable. Emphasis still remained 
upon the oriental conception of women. 
The book's exaltation, as our Puritans 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 51 

saw it, was not of women's spiritual life, 
merely of their service tending to do- 
mestic comfort and in a lavish, unintelli- 
gent fecundity — a large percentage of 
Puritan children died from undue drain- 
age of maternal vitality. The Jews of 
the Bible more often enslaved — some- 
times with worshipful attitude, as men 
at times to-day, nevertheless enslaved — 
their women, and the misogynous senti- 
ment of that old people,^ and of their 
Puritan heirs, is disappearing in our 
time only before the scientific and eco- 
nomic truth that marks the forward 
movement of our social will. 

Now, another divagation: — It is well 
known that citizens of larger towns are 
apt to treat with light scorn our country 
newspapers' interests. The well-deep 
sympathy in recital of happenings to 

1 To this day men of the synagogue pray, "0 Lord 
God, Eternal King of the Universe, I thank thee that 
thou hast not made me a woman." And women sub- 
missively murmur, "0 Lord God, Eternal King of 
the Universe, I thank thee that thou hast made me 
according to thy will." 



52 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

fellow earth-dwellers that has grown in 
human veins since our race evolved from 
cave-dwellers, the humanity which 
charms in the pages of Thomas Tusser 
and Worthy Fuller and Izaak Walton — 
when put in country papers excites the 
burghers' risibles. Perhaps the big-city 
people nurse a grudge of jealousy against 
the villagers for so intimate, alluring 
comment. Their derision is all the 
stranger because the country papers' 
wording is often that of the metropolitan 
press. It is easy to see that when every 
hamlet has its '* society," which is all its 
folk, to report, the country paper has 
universalized, has democratized the as- 
sumption formerly affected by a few. 
Take, for example, items from that one- 
time paragon of personalities, the 
Court Journal of London: 

The Countess of Carysfort is at Elton Hall 
in Huntingdonshire. Her Ladyship does not 
intend visiting Glenart Castle this year, as 
has been reported. 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 53 

The health of Lady Theodosia Springe Rice 
has recently much improved. 

The Earl of Shannon has been indisposed, 
but we are happy to state his Lordship is re- 
covering. 

The Duchess of Canizzaro is still at Dover 
where her Grace intends to remain until the 
end of the month. 

Lord and Lady Holland entertained a party 
on Monday evening at Holland House to cele- 
brate his Lordship's birthday. 

Mrs. Phillip and her lovely daughter gave 
a splendid ball and supper on Friday to a 
distinguished party of fashionables and 
literati. 

Now, does this differ from the country 
newspaper — except in names? Which 
has real values? — those first racy jot- 
tings of life going on round the little lo- 
cal press of Laurel Town, or these meat- 
iest selections from the Court Journal 
some years back? Which has more hu- 
man worth? which the finer merit of help- 
fulness? — the larger life and intelli- 
gence ? No healthy, normal being would 



54 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

prefer Mrs. Phillip's ** splendid balP' 
with its "fashionables and literati" 
(something bad in that phrase!) to the 
Library supper where six huge, redolent 
chicken pies nncrusted upon the table. 
At that supper the * literati'' we may 
be sure were not wanting — ^but, for the 
time being, put snugly within the green- 
curtained book-case — ^Irving and Whit- 
tier and Longfellow, all well thumbed 
by the neighborhood youngsters, Dick- 
ens, Scott, and other confreres, and Wil- 
liam of Avon cheek by jowl with a good 
English version of Homer. Of Homer 
that supper had the real humanity and 
the real heartiness, and none but he, or 
the great Shakespeare himself, could 
write down its labor-founded laughter 
and appetiteful history. ** There is 
nothing better for a man than that he 
should eat and drink, and that he should 
make his soul enjoy good in his labour." 
Miss Nettie Stone spent the day with 
Miss Maggie McClanahan: the Duchess 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 55 

of Canizzaro is still at Dover where her 
Grace purposes to remain. Chronicles 
of the farmer ^s daughter amuse the 
sophisticated. Yet who shall dogmatize 
on value! No American, surely, the 
bases of whose life are faith in the 
divinity that dwells in work and workers. 
Farmers' daughters have doubtless con- 
tributed more of merit to human life than 
duchesses. But even in these days of 
strengthening democracy, meretricious 
trappings rather than simple worth exalt 
an old feudal title, given because of some 
ancestor's vigor or depravity, and de- 
press life more justly modelled. *^Lust 
and falsehood, craft and traffic, prece- 
dent and gold,'' sang Swinburne with 
characteristic warmth: 

*' Tongue of courtier, kiss of harlot, promise 

bought and sold. 
Gave you heritage of empire over thralls of 

old." 

Not yet, perhaps, through the influence 



56 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

of ideas foreign to liberty and democ- 
racy, have we thorouglily within our 
nation's blood conviction of the debilita- 
tingness of pomp and of title — their 
parasitic devouring the goods of the 
weak and defenceless, their tawdry 
ceremonials and symbolisms, their mil- 
linery to catch the eye and hypno- 
tize the sense and conceal spiritual 
pinchbeckerie. Not yet are we seers 
enough to estimate a human soul apart 
from its trappings. In spite of Thack- 
eray's kniving analysis there still lives 
in our midst many a snob. 

To the country newspaper some victim 
of the inkpot now and then earns his 
subscription by contribution of a weekly 
budget. This we saw just now when the 
reporter told of his job to plaster Mr. 
Murphy's house this week. **Your 
seribe" is known in many a community. 
And how delicious his folk-humor ! How 
luscious his details! Listen to one — 
merely one — of his unnumbered and in- 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 57 

describable antics! If it has not the 
jugglery of Touchstone, it has that pro- 
vincial distortion of speech, which Dr. 
Johnson found in Sir Hugh Evans ^ and 
Dr. Caius' of ^^The Merry Wives of 
Windsor'* — ** its power . . . even he that 
despises it, is unable to resist'': 

Oi waz sawin wood wan could mornin whin 
wan av me gud frinds cum along, an bein 
ankshus to kape up me akwayntunce shtoped 
to tawk aphwile, an wuz makin phun av me 
shpellin, an oi sed: o, begorra, an oi don't 
bodthur me bed wud sitch a shmawl matthur, 
for whin oim tellin the thrute oi gits that 
exoited oi furgits me manurs intoirly, an awl 
me gud owld shtep muthur wuz tachin me 
wud grate panes, and a peace ava a hickory 
three to pint it off wid and make me rispickt 
hur an me privylidges. 

Sumebody's ould jumpin-jak av a kow, bein 
no kuller at awl, but awl white, an a bob tale 
that's bin atin gras in ivry blissed man's 
pasthure 2 munths an moar, wid dogs an 
kussin flyin afthur the same, she's bein missed, 
an sumebody must be atin bafe, be gorra, an 
her gone intirely an suddint. 



58 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

Sum ave the byes ar ould batchlurz (which 
last it's none av the phwalt av thimsilves, be 
is said wid thrute) wint down ovar the gum- 
bow path to the woods, an kilt an murthered a 
koon of the animal kind, an sizzled him ovur 
the koles til he wud do to ate wud kreem an 
unyuns an a gud apytight. 

Misthur Tuttle, that same bein the school 
masthur, sint out the wurrud that amazed 
us, bein the sad nuse that ** Henry Eggart 
fell, an wuz lyin unkonshus sum hours'*; an 
then he rilaved us awl moytily whin he sed it 
wuz ashleep he fell. 

Lloyd Grant got a foine gittar in his sox 
on Chrismas mornin, oi am towld. An faith' 
thair is moar gittars an fiddels an mandylins 
in this saim nayburhud than in any ither av 
its soize in the kunthry, an devil a tinkle av 
um did oi iver heer yit. Give the owld mon 
a serrynade, bys. 

**We hope,'' wrote the Cherry Vale 
correspondent of the Gazette, *^that 
some of the good cooks of this vicinity 
will study the premium list of the Doug- 
las County Fair, and help make a dis- 
play from this part of the county/' 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 59 

A heart-of- September sun looks down 
upon the festival, held here under rough 
roofs, yonder under the radiance of the 
Lord of Light himself. Answering their 
newspaper's call, what handiwork have 
the women not sent to ^^help make a dis- 
play from this part of the county!'' 
Landscape and loghouse and ** crazy" 
bedquilts, drawn-work scarfs, embroid- 
ered centre-pieces wrought through long 
summer afternoons — all come from cedar 
chests and lavender-scented closets. 
Deftly painted chocolate pots, tea-jars 
and cups from china shelves ; children 's 
portraits in crayon ; and flowers proces- 
sioning from April apple-blossoms on 
blue satin to October golden-rod on black. 

Pears, also, of alabaster whiteness and 
fineness of grain, and yellow-meated 
peaches swimming in syrupy juices; 
toothsome white bread ; the protein-bear- 
ing brown loaf; snowy disks of ** moun- 
tain'' cake and parallelograms of choco- 
late and maple, brought to confines by 



60 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

plethoric mangoes and ^* apple-butter" 
breathing spice. Those huge pigeon- 
blood rubies you see over there are not 
pigeon-blood rubies at all but merely- 
moulded, Douglas County, currant jellies 
— ^which might indeed market at the price 
of rubies if the market could get them. 

From garden and field the biggest ears 
of yellow corn, and biggest ears of white 
corn ; stalks so aspiring as to bear their 
tassels above a man ahorseback ; bags of 
wheat off land yielding fifty bushels of 
plump red kernels to the acre. Then, 
too, grapes from vineyard and pergola- 
pulpy Concords, aromatic Delawares, 
spicy Dianks, each sweet-scented globe 
aping the sun in roundness, and conserv- 
ing within its blooming skin the dews and 
honeying warmth of a whole summer. 

Yonder across the field stand cattle 
and the lesser breeds, well-fed, well- 
rubbed, patiently switching the assiduous 
flies of autumn. And their owners shift 
about substantially ruminating a stalk 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 61 

of grey grass and shaking head in assent 
or dissent of opinion, while gentle- 
handed judges stroke the merits of the 
exhibit and tie on the ribbon won. Of 
such material solidity is the fair. And 
this is what '^your scribe" of a neighbor- 
ing paper says of the occasion: 

Nearly every one from this vicinity attended 
the Fair last week, and all pronounced it a 
success. 

It may not be known, but we would like to 
say that it was one of our neighbors who fur- 
nished the greased pig for the Fair. Who 
can beat it ? 

Much honor is due John Blevins for the 
grand display he made. He brought Grant 
township to the front, and the contest between 
Grant and Eudora being so close that the com- 
mittee could not decide, a disinterested party, 
Mr. Eben Baldwin, was called upon. He cut 
it in the centre, giving each township one-half 
the premium. 

But the country paper has another 
side, and one of its duties is to speak 
with fellow-feeling, and due sense of the 



62 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

moral tone of the community, of tragic 
circumstances — often inscrutable, mys- 
terious, working in silence and indirec- 
tion, seizing and drawing into its vortex 
both young and old — the tragic circum- 
stance of folk that walk with it in daily 
ways, or come to lie with quiet hands 
beneath the earth's protecting cover. 
And youth ! — capricious, driven by some 
misguiding, shadowy will from which no 
power seems able to wrest them — they 
are not fruits of cities alone, as these 
following paragraphs show: 

Several years ago two bright boys left 
Pawpaw Grove. Many supposed they had 
gone west, while others thought they would 
come about again some time. The following 
verse, which one of their friends lately re- 
ceived, tells its own story. The moral every 
parent who is raising boys for the world's 
market, should carefully note : 

"When John and I were boys 
We were bad enough 'tis true; 
Had fun, made lots of noise, 
For that was all we had to do. 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 63 

"We never worked a single day, 
Our parents didn't seem to care; 
They'd never a single word to say, 
Whether at home or elsewhere. 

"John soon learned how to swear. 
And I began to. badly curse, 
And together, no matter where. 
We boys grew worse and worse. 

"The girls would sometimes say, 
*Boys, you'll come to some bad end. 
And then you'll have to run away. 
Where no one will be your friend.' 

"I said one day I would not work. 
For my parents never taught me how, 
I would be a burglar or a shirk. 
Before I'd follow behind a plow. 

"I always thought I was doing right. 
While my parents never said a word. 
In my course they seemed to delight. 
And never for a moment demurred. 

"John and I talked the matter before; 
By fixing upon a certain night. 
When we could turn the table o'er, 
And leave the country in a flight. 

"John took a horse and I a mule, 
One night when it was very dark. 
We thought it was the safest rule. 
To go when the dogs wouldn't bark. 

"So out of the country we went, 
And never stopped to look behind, 



64 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

For neither of us had a single cent — 
We would put up with fare of any kind. 

"We travelled half next day and that night, 
Without a bite of bread to eat; 
We felt the keen demands of appetite. 
And swore we never would be beat. 

"The rest of the story is easy told. 
But neither of us will ever tell — 
For being brave and very bold, 
We got five years in our state's hell." 

In days immediately forerunning the 
full-throated song now singing in our 
midst, our country newspaper lacked 
verse made by its readers. Still, not 
wholly silenced lay the muse, and lisp- 
ings did at times reach the editor — 
faintly scented manuscripts from ladies 
whose eyes had the unreal look of 
dreamers, whose skin an anaemic trans- 
parency, whose curls were a trifle set — 
dames who spent their days behind re- 
poseful green blinds, and, leaving the 
protection of their homes, ventured down 
the street a trifle conscious of their 
progress. Or the song may have come 
from preacher, or school-teacher, men 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 65 

cloistered like the women, and like them 
finding solace in the lyric voice. Can 
any one of these have been what Shelley's 
discerning spirit clearly saw? 

*'How many a rustic Milton has passed by, 
Stifling the speechless longings of his heart, 
In unremitting drudgery and care ! 
How many a vulgar Cato has compelled 
His energies, no longer tameless then, 
To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail ! 
How many a Newton, to whose passive ken 
Those mighty spheres that gem infinity 
"Were only specks of tinsel, fixed in heaven 
To light the midnight of his native town!" 

In place of the old-day poetry-corner 
a quadrangle is now apt to stand with 
the heading ^^Of Interest to Women," 
or **The Woman's World" — as if inter- 
ests of women were not as broad as 
human life, and their world the whole 
round world. In what the man-editor 
conceives alluring to women you find 
domestic engineering notes whiffing the 
ozone of clean shelves ; the scent of corn- 



66 WOEKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

dodgers; receipts for sun-preserved 
strawberries — true now, as of those of 
Dr. Boteler in his day long-foregone; 
** Doubtless God could have made a better 
berry, but doubtless God never did.'' 
You find letters on home economics 
formulated by some housemother 's clever 
brain, after years of tests in her kitchen- 
laboratory — advices, restated now and 
democratized, but bringing to your mind 
such books as the ** Ladies Cabinet'' and 
^* Closets of Delight" to which our fore- 
mothers of the seventeenth century, per- 
plexed by some problem in housewifery, 
turned for an unraveling. 

Looking back to what we first said of 
the genesis of our country newspaper, 
this, then, is undeniable : — If our English 
ancestors had not founded their New 
World settlements upon our race taste 
for self-governing democracy and hus- 
bandry, we should not be having the 
beautiful, homely records our country 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 67 

newspapers are making to-day. If our 
English forefathers had come to Amer- 
ica as the French came, with need of 
thaumaturgy and priest as middleman 
between the individual and the Infinite 
Will, and also with slight clinging to 
racial family life — for the French drove 
the fur trade, not agriculture, they 
looked askance at the farmer and worked 
to keep this country a wilderness, not to 
cast it to uses of civilized life — if our 
English forebears had come into the 
wilderness without ideals of race purity 
indestructibly in their heads and state- 
building instincts of the old home in their 
hearts, our people, we of the United 
States themselves, should not have been. 
In the English infare wives came with 
husbands — ^women and men together, as 
in the old times east of the Mediterra- 
nean the Hebrew men and women went 
forth from Ur to go into the land of 
Canaan. Hand in hand they built their 
narrow dwelling and stood forth as a 



68 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

family, their altar and covenant the old- 
time mighty emphasizer of the family 
and individual husbandman, the Bible — 
which, we repeat, to their faith needed 
no interpreter save their own conning 
and independent thinking. That is, the 
English man and woman stood by their 
own strength. But they knew they stood 
most lastingly when united in a family. 
Thus the English foundation survives: 
for that reason we are here. 

Our Puritans wrought with the might 
that lies in fidelity to principle, a fidelity 
that grew in them to an abnormally 
developed will — such as characterized 
the Jew before history was written and 
ever characterizes the Puritan of all 
times and lands. For, to reiterate, they 
had a dynamic religion, a generator of 
power — ^not a religion of refuge: a re- 
ligion that individualized, that strength- 
ened the soul by prompting it to solitary 
and independent seeking of The Eternal, 
not a religion that enervated by commun- 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 69 

ity acquiescence to and repetition of 
formulas. 

Descendants of these Puritans dis- 
tributed themselves over this continent 
during generations, we say, and founded 
villages and towns which have preserved 
their old-time, self-governing principles 
— ^towns in which still prevails the esti- 
mate that human beings are equal in each 
having the human quality; where no 
aping of feudal ideas and disdain for 
manual labor lords it, and judge and col- 
lege professor run their own ** machine,'' 
curry their own horse, carry home their 
own beefstake, hoe their own thriving 
garden ; where the dentist may have such 
social recognition as the doctor, and the 
cobbler of shoes live in the same standard 
of physical ease as the cobbler of souls. 
The Puritan progeny upbuilt communi- 
ties, we repeat, where conventional prej- 
udices and estimates of externals have 
small influence; where living is simple, 
housekeeping is homemaking, and the 



70 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

family's health, convenience and sense 
of home-seclusion and protection and 
interdependence, such as Whittier pic- 
tured in his * * Snow-Bound, " rules. Of 
such living, race ethics, language, cus- 
toms are the core. Old English traits of 
love of soil, love of fresh, humorous, red- 
blood characteristics that grow out of 
the soil — human nature modified by its 
home-breeding facts and realities — guide 
and bless the people. *'Come here with 
your horses," sang a young blacksmith 
advertising in his local paper with verses 
of his own : 

* ' Come here with your horses, your mares and 

your mules, 
And give me a chance to make noise with my 

tools, 
Very lonesome am I when my shop floor is 

bare — 
Even once in a year when no horses are there. 

**Come in the winter, spring, fall and sum- 
mer. 
Drive into my shop every old and new comer, 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 71 

And if I can^t suit you and treat you dead 

true, 
No man in the state can place you a shoe. 

**Ere you drive any farther it will pay you to 

stop 
At D. W. Wilson's Horseshoeing Shop/' 

Such a people are not a class. They 
are unconscious of any social order save 
their own. Dwelling in town, village 
and outlying lands, they are not burghers 
subordinated to a small, aristocratic 
body of directors ; not a peasantry whose 
sole interest in this world is the soil and 
its products. They are democratic self- 
governors, owning the land they inhabit, 
whatever human hands have put upon 
it, and, greatest gift of all, filled to the 
brain's brim with communal spirit and 
the ideals of their race. They have the 
sweet habit of mind of Americans, not 
the sour habit of mind common in 
foreigners, and they have the sweet habit 
because of their opportunity to use their 



72 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

will and control or create their destiny — 
the individual is not fretted or driven 
back in his will by unconquerable powers. 
This knowledge, which democracy 
brings, gives them joy in living and love 
for and interest in their fellows, as their 
papers testify. They rejoice in fresh 
sensibilities, what William James called 
** responsive sensibilities.'' **We of the 
highly educated classes (so-called) have 
most of us got far, far away from Na- 
ture,'' added Mr. James. **We are 
trained to seek the choice, the rare, the 
exquisite exclusively, and to overlook 
the common . . . and we grow stone- 
blind and insensible to life's more ele- 
mentary and general goods and joy." 

Life is to them worth living. Given 
their race ideas, a world before them to 
make their own and no captious, arro- 
gant will to say them nay, they are not 
apt to suffer what the old theology called 
minor *^ visible, carnal sins of gluttony 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 73 

and drunkenness, ' ' but rather sins which 
ecclesiasts pronounced (when seen in 
others than themselves) major — **pride, 
malice, revenge," and ** venomous, tur- 
bulent principles of a pitiful, crooked 
wisdom," namely, independent action 
and independent thinking. This peo- 
ple's ** responsive sensibilities," their 
hopes, ambitions, jealousies, their jocu- 
larities and mellow, gleaming humor, 
their local papers evidence through 
letters and reports at election. Their 
master-subject for thought, **How shall 
we be governed? — ^by whom!" is a moral 
stir, an electrolysis, purifying and mak- 
ing hygienic many a fountain. The poli- 
tician among them, at times intensely 
individualistic, intent on the pressure he 
may bring to further his aims, is com- 
monly known root and branch to his 
neighbors — ^but he presents no back- 
ground to the stranger, and foreign ex- 
cursionists, prejudging his life as lack- 



74 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

ing the social group, give him the name 
of shallow egotist.^ 

1 An unexpurgated, inedited history of the politics 
of almost any of our small communities, would make 
what its politicians might call "mighty interesting 
reading." Here is a passage of amusing unction : 

"Editor of the Tribune: — Ex- Judge O. Fasset and 
*the boys' did come down to Baldwin — Johnny and 
Barney and Levison, S. T. Hacher, Kinsmore, and 
Senator Greer. The place, College Hall; the time, 
last evening; the audience, small; the first speaker, 
Morton. 

"In self-defence Morton proceeded to show how 
easily he could be deceived about the funds at hand. 
He *got off the nest' several times and rambled 
round, but Bro. Hacher and J. C. Lark brought him 
back and held his nozzle to the bank. The probate 
judge closed by an effort at ridiculing D. P. Twitchell. 
The result was a painful abortion, and like Josh 
Billings' rooster, he limped off the stage consider- 
ably reduced.' 

"The next was Barney, the county clerk, who would 
have done well were it not for the lies he manufac- 
tured about the Tribune selling out, which shows him 
to be an ungrateful dog, as the Tribune has always 
spoken well of him. His chances would be much 
better if the people could forget that his office pays 
him $3500 a year, and his hired help does all the 
work for three hundred, while Barney loafs and 
pockets the balance. 

"Then came Levison who more than intimated that 
it was very important he be elected county attorney, 
in view of the underholt he had on cases pending. 

"Then rose Judge Fasset with one hundred and 
forty-four mouthfuls of articulate wind. He began 
with Kinsmore and sponged him off by saying he 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 75 

Faith, such as the Old Testament in- 
culcated, in ideals looking to race pres- 
ervation, taught our people of inborn 

ought to be re-elected because he had done his duty, 
and when his party found that kind of a man they 
ought to stick to him. But his eloquence lit up, and 
sparkled like a rotten mackerel by moonlight, when 
he came to let his 'gigantic intelleck' light down on 
Johnny and Barney as faithful oflBcers, and Levison 
as an able prosecutor, while 'I was judge.' A new- 
comer who sat near me, in a whisper half audible, 
said, 'Great heavens, was he ever judge?' 

"'Yes, sir; eight years on the bench.' 

"'Well, you Hesperus people beat the world. It 
is the first time I ever knew a people to make a 
judge entirely of guts and hair. They can't beat 
that east of the Wabash.' 

"The ex-judge tried to be witty by ridiculing Judge 
Endry. He said the probate judge was an ignorant 
blacksmith until he was a man grown, but 'Mrs. 
Endry was a very estimable lady and had taken the 
judge to her knee and learned him to read and write, 
and he had made great progress.' This delicate and 
tasteful allusion left the sympathies of the whole 
audience in favor of Mrs. Fasset for what appeared 
her failure to do as much for her lunkey as the 
other good lady had done for hers. Just here my 
Indiana man put in: 

" 'You're coddin' me about that meat-head ever 
bein' a judge, ain't you?' 

" 'No, sir ; he was once judge of this judicial dis- 
trict.' 

"'Well, he must be out of a job, ain't he? — ^to be 
going round like this! I have never seen it equaled 
but once, sir. Old Bill Maxfield, an aristocratic old 



76 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

democracy to love the fields, and it kept 
them to agriculture. In ethical schemes 
of the older portion of the book, the 
reward to a righteous life was, here and 
now, rich herds and large families; 
'* Blessings on thy basket and thy store, 
the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of 
thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep, if 
thou shalt hearken diligently to the voice 
of the Lord thy God, to observe and to 
do his commandments''; **The Lord 
shall open unto thee his good treasure, 
the heaven to give rain unto his land in 
his season, and to bless all the work of 
thy hand ; and thou shalt lend unto many 

cuss, has a fine farm on the flats east of the Wabash, 
and has it all ditched nicely. Old Bill don't weigh 
more than ninety pounds, clothes and all; he is all 
dried up, so there ain't oil enough in him to grease a 
gimblet, and when he goes out to see his farm he 
has a big lackey to go along. And when they come 
to a ditch his lackey just spans the ditch with his 
hands on one bank and his feet on the other, and 
humps up a little like a bridge, and old Bill walks 
right over, and keeps clean; but the other fellow gets 
d — d nasty.' 

"Our opposition people are glad to see the Tribune 
go the whole ticket. We must have a bold paper.'* 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 77 

nations and thou shalt not borrow : And 
the Lord shall make thee the head and 
not the tail ; and thou shalt be above only 
and thou shalt not be beneath; if that 
thou hearken unto the commandments of 
the Lord thy God/' 

These were real and accountable teach- 
ings. They gripped the mind that 
esteemed them the voice of the world's 
moral governor. About the time faith 
in the relevancy of the Scriptures faded, 
came a loss of reverence for country 
dwelling and a flocking to towns. Ke- 
birth of wonder at and reverence for an 
Everlasting Truth, reaffirmation of the 
old moralities in the moral and physical 
world, reawakening of race conscious- 
ness and race conception of nature, may 
still be necessary to restore us to real- 
ities. 

How records of the simple country life 
of Hebrew families, before the Hebrew 
heart conceived desire for a king, acted 
upon our early, liberty-loving American 



78 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

stock is clear. Not only the rigid and 
spiritual monotheism of the writings 
entered the people's life-blood as one 
with their self-governing instinct, the 
very phrasing passed into their every- 
day speech. In order independently to 
read the Bible, many a man and woman 
learned the alphabet. The King James 
version kept a masterpiece of English in 
their hands, and, far better, in their de- 
votion to its sanctity, its marvellous 
English speech upon their lips. Non- 
conformists, as Bunyan and Defoe in 
England, wrote the purest Anglo-Saxon 
of their day. 

This impulse to learn to read in order 
to con the Bible and to learn its phrase, 
working long in the active brains and 
free hearts of self-governors, spurred 
them to knowledge and confirmed those 
ideas ^ of education which the Great Ref- 

1 When, under the inspiration of Protestant ethics, 
European peoples began to read the Bible, each man 
became conscious of a God that demanded no priest, 
"that accepteth not the person of princes, nor ge- 



OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 79 

ormation had principled. Fervor to be 
able to read the book went further, for 
it expanded and warmed a passion for 
all learning, and assisted in founding 
state-supported schools. How, with 
broadened action and sympathy, it has 
cast among all men of earth ideas of 
self-rule and education, we are to-day 
seeing. 

Off springing from this knowledge and 
this fellow-feeling is our country news- 
paper. Nowhere, one might say, is 
there an open-minded press, voicing 
every soul as its community's factor, 
carrying the feeling of what Sir Thomas 
Browne in another spirit called **the 

gardeth the rich more than the poor — they are all 
the work of his hands." Among such peoples the 
democratic spirit continued to wax. Take for in- 
stance Scotland: When the folk became Knoxite 
and cotters found felicity in reading the Scriptures, 
they turned from the taker of human life, the war- 
rior, on the one hand, and the parasite on human 
life, the monk, on the other, to united, pastoral life 
and more democratic estimates of the people. And 
the nation humanized so seriously that after a few 
generations a poet of world-democratic sentiments, 
Robert Burns, flowered in their midst. 



80 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

many-headed mass/' save where signifi- 
cant Puritan sense and folk-qualities 
have stirred the people, and built their 
records. Modern journalism may have 
sprung from satirical and political 
pamphlet and diatribe, as certain writ- 
ers claim. The genius of the country 
newspapers' columns, however, is the 
obverse of these — not malediction and 
hate but neighbor interest and love. 

To set down earthly careers in a 
family Bible 's interleaving pages. Births, 
Marriages, Deaths, is a custom now 
foregone. Our country newspaper, not 
unlike the Ark of the Covenant of the 
old-time people, inasmuch as it jour- 
neys through deserts and across Jor- 
dans with the folk who made it, and 
leaves a blessing upon whatever place 
it rests — our country newspaper aptly 
gives each family's history; and on its 
pages its folk have come to rely. 



FORERUNNERS OF WOMEN'S 

COLLEGIATE EDUCATION: 

AND MARY ASTELL 



If worthie Ladies would but take such paine, 
In studies that immortall glorie raise, 
As they do often take in matters vaine 
Deserving none at all, or little praise : . . . 
And further, if they could with their owne pen, 
Set forth the worthie praise of their owne kind, 
And not to be beholding unto men, 
Whom hate and envie often so doth blind, 
To make us heare the good but now and then. 
But ev'rie place full of their ill we find; 
Then sure I judge, their praises would be such. 
As hardly men should have attaind so much. 
For many writers do not onely strive. 
Too highly to extoll our sexes fame, 
But that they thinke they must withall contrive. 
To publish womens blemish and their blame; 
As fearing haply, lest they might arrive. 
By their most due desait, to greater name. 
"Translation of Orlando Furioso, 1634," 
Sir John Haeington. 

'Twas a woman at first 

(Indeed she was curst) 
In knowledge that tasted delight. 

And sages agree 

The laws should decree 
To tho, first possessor the right. 

But men of discerning 

Have thought that in learning 

To yield to a lady was hard. 

"Lines to Lady Mary Wortley Montague," 
Alexandee Pope. 

For knowledge is not an inert and passive princi- 
ple, which comes to us whether we will or no; but it 
must be sought before it can be won. . . . They who 
do not feel the darkness, will never look for the light. 
"History of Civilization in England," 
Henry Thomas Buckle. 



FORERUNNERS OF WOMEN'S 

COLLEGIATE EDUCATION: 

AND MARY ASTELL 

Education is Greek in its foundation. 
Our modern education is outlined in 
practices of worthies of Greece, seminal 
thinkers, writers and workers for 
youth's training in race ethics and race 
ideas; founded, also, on practices of 
Greek cities in preparing their young 
men for civic life and cultivated leisure. 

In the unrolling of old centuries these 
Greek ideas of education passed south- 
ward to flourishing city-states on the 
African coast. Across the sea, also, to 
Rome, and there under the practical 
genius of it people found efficient serv- 
ice. Rome sowed the seed still more 
broadly. For instance, in the last 
quarter of the first century of our 

83 



84 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

era, under the influence of Agrieola, 
military governor, Eoman schools 
flourished in Britain. Later, in the re- 
vival of Latin, education again sporadic- 
ally enrooted and civilized centres of the 
north — at the court of Charlemagne, in 
what is now France, as the writings of 
Alcuin and Eginhard testify ; at the court 
of British Alfred the Great, according 
to Asserts ''Deeds of Alfred," and, too, 
by the evidence of Alfred himself. 

Later amid the dwellers of monasteries 
and nunneries, during the centuries of 
intellectual stagnation, ideas of education 
still continued concrete practices. But 
in such environment they were shorn of 
almost every Greek advantage, and, cut 
off from constantly refreshing life 
forces, they sank to the level of their 
surroundings and became deformed and 
denatured weaklings. 

The idea of training the young in race 
feeling and the thought contained in race 
works, especially in literature, was, then, 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 85 

one of the immeasurable gifts of Greece 
to later times. So, to understand any 
line of our modem education we have to 
start with the passing of Europe from 
dreaming, fictive and scholastic centuries 
— ^to start with the times after Petrarch 
and Boccaccio, the first men of note who 
had ambition, however much they failed 
in accomplishment, to read Greek liter- 
ature in the original — ^we have to start 
with the times called the Pagan Eenais- 
sance, the change in life and traditions 
that followed the revival of Greek learn- 
ing and dissemination and love of Greek 
ideas — a movement which had gained 
strength for perhaps two hundred years, 
and notable acceleration after the fall of 
Constantinople in the year 1453, the se- 
quent flight of scholars holding in their 
arms treasures of old Greek writers, and 
the settlement of these learned among 
Greek-studying, and hence Greek-loving, 
nations of Europe. 
In the fifteenth century these western 



86 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

nations were coming to harmony with 
the changed environment their awakened 
intelligence had created. Their world 
was moving in a new orbit and adapting 
itself to a new life. Outwardly, in the 
beautiful physical world invincibly estab- 
lished by Copernicus, they were stimula- 
ting their imagination by voyages and 
tales of undiscovered lands. Through 
such leaders as Erasmus, and directing 
learning into Christian channels, they 
were seeking interpretation of the won- 
derful human life before their eyes. The 
spiritual treasures which the stormy 
politics of the time had set free — ^gifts of 
the higher faculties of man — they were 
seizing and absorbing with the avidity of 
a youthful, ardent, seemingly insatiable 
emotion. And the new printing press 
was casting abroad seed ten thousand 
fold. 

Now, one of the most thoroughly alive 
and active of European peoples in these 
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 87 

the remotest towards the west. In all 
the stir and out-blossoming, the peoples 
of Britain, our ancestors, had grasped 
the old Greek idea of education afresh. 
They called it ^^The New Learning.'' 
Quite independently of what monasteries 
and nunneries had practised in years 
foregone, they seized it, this Greek idea 
of education, with such earnestness, tak- 
ing it out of the world of theory and 
putting it in practice, that by the middle 
of the sixteenth century little English 
girls, in their country homes, were think- 
ing, living, doing after Greek ethics. 
They were also reading Greek prose- 
poetry. In this fact is a point where our 
European ancestors surpassed the old 
Hellenes. For in Greece education had 
been for one half of humanity alone. 
Education of girls was purely domestic 
in Hellas. Highly educated women num- 
bered few, and seem for the most part 
to have served for the entertainment and 
pleasure of men, not for substantial 



88 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

influences on the great social will, and 
in the everyday home, family, clan, united 
and national life. 

In our seeking results of this Eenais- 
sance of education, in England, this New 
Learning, we shall find most satisfying 
its working-out in concrete instances. 
These let us at once examine. 

The home of Sir Thomas More, whose 
fine figure you remember as Lord Chan- 
cellor under Henry VIII, affords first 
instances. Sir Thomas believed in the 
education of women, and set forth his 
faith in advice to a friend; this, remem- 
ber, must have been before 1535, for in 
that year he suffered death : 

** May you meet with a wife who is not 
always stupidly silent, '' he wrote in 
lively Latin verse, *'nor always prattling 
nonsense. May she be learned, if pos- 
sible. ... A woman thus accomplished 
will always be drawing sentences and 
maxims of virtue out of the best authors 
of antiquity. She will be herself in all 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 89 

changes of fortune, neither blown in 
prosperity, nor broken with adversity. 
You will find in her an even, cheerful, 
good-humored friend, and an agreeable 
companion for life. She will infuse 
knowledge into your children with their 
milk, and from infancy train them up to 
wisdom. Whatever company you are 
engaged in you will long to be at home, 
and retire with delight from the society 
of men into the bosom of one so dear, so 
knowing, and so amiable. . . . You will 
waste with pleasure whole days and 
nights in her conversation, and be ever 
finding out new beauties in her discourse. 
She will keep your mind in perpetual 
serenity, restrain its mirth from being 
dissolute and prevent its melancholy 
from being painful." 

A man with such sentiments about 
women would aptly be father of daugh- 
ters who reflected his magnanimity. 
That illustrious woman we call Margaret 
Eoper, ** dearest Meg,'' ** sweet Meg," 



90 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

Sir Thomas addressed her in his letters, 
was the eldest daughter of this high soul. 
Her beautiful and picturesque figure, 
whether in service of housekeeping, or 
in London streets bursting through the 
guard to speak once more to her father 
as he went to prison, we have all seen in 
our mind's eye, and with something of 
love and awe and heightened conscious- 
ness of what women have been and have 
done. Margaret '^had a ready wit," 
says an old author, ** quick conception, 
tenacious memory, a fine imagination, 
and was very happy in her sentiments 
and ways of expressing herself. ' ' Born 
in the year 1508, within the next two 
years her sisters Elizabeth and Cecilia 
followed her, both like her of many vir- 
tues and a singularly able intelligence. 

In the house of More, on the banks 
of the Thames near London, there was 
also a kinswoman, Margaret Clement, a 
domestic in the household, whose letters 
Erasmus, chief scholar of his time, com- 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 91 

mended for their good sense and chaste 
Latin. 

Snch women as these, when they 
married, took the same care of their 
children's education that others had 
taken of their own. We know this is 
especially true of Margaret Eoper and 
of Margaret Clement, whose daughters 
carried the torch of the fundamental 
training of women into the next century. 

In these days there was also Katherine 
Parr, to whose wisdom and balanced 
faculties the will of her husband, Henry 
VIII, bears lasting testimony. She, 
after her marriage to the king, zealously 
wrote Latin letters — and elegant Latin 
they were — that her desire of having the 
Bible understood by all the English 
people might be fulfilled. 

Yet another instance of the sixteenth 
century educated woman is Elizabeth 
Tudor, born in 1533, afterwards queen. 
Of Elizabeth a master told who began 
teaching her Greek when she was only 



92 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

fifteen, and continued even after she liad 
come to the throne. **I believe/' said 
this Eoger Ascham, **that besides her 
perfect readiness in Latin, Italian, 
French and Spanish, she readeth here 
at Windsor more Greek every day than 
some prebendary of this church doth 
read Latin in a whole week. And that 
which is most praiseworthy of all, within 
the walla of her privy chamber she hath 
obtained that excellency of learning, to 
understand, speak and write, both wit- 
tily with head and fair with hand, as 
scarce one or two wits in both univer- 
sities have in many years reached unto. ' ' 
*^She was of an admirable ready wit,'' 
says another contemporary, **very skil- 
ful in all kinds of needlework, had an 
excellent ear in music, played well upon 
divers instruments. . . . The 5th of 
September, 1566, she on a sudden made 
an oration in Latin unto the whole Uni- 
versity of Oxford, in the presence of 
the Spanish ambassador. ' ' 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 93 

Jane Grey, also, that exquisite, poetic 
girl sacrificed to others' ambitions, en- 
joyed a not unlike education: *^ Before 
I went to Germany," wrote Ascham, *^I 
came to Broadgate, in Leicestershire, to 
take my leave of that noble Lady Jane 
Grey, to whom I was exceedingly much 
beholding. Her parents, the duke and 
duchess, with all the household, gentle- 
men and gentlewomen, were hunting in 
the park. I found her in her chamber 
reading 'Phaedon Platonis' in Greek, 
and that with as much delight as some 
gentlemen would read a merry tale of 
Boccaccio. 

** After salutation and duty done, with 
some other talk, I asked her why she 
would lose such pastime in the park? 
Smiling she answered me, *I wist all 
their sport in the park is but a shadow 
to that pleasure I find in Plato. Alas! 
good folk, they never felt what true 
pleasure meant.' 

** 'And how came you madam,' quoth 



94 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

I, ^to this deep knowledge of pleasure, 
and what did chiefly allure you unto it, 
seeing not many women, but very few 
men, have attained thereunto T 

^' '1 will tell you,' quoth she, 'and 
tell you a truth which, perchance, ye will 
marvel at. One of the greatest benefits 
that ever God gave me is that he sent 
me so sharp and severe parents and so 
gentle a schoolmaster. For when I am 
in presence either of father or mother, 
whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, 
or go, eat, drink, be merry or sad, be 
sewing, playing, dancing, or doing any- 
thing else, I must do it, as it were, in 
such weight, measure, and number, even 
so perfectly as God made the world, or 
else I am so taunted, so cruelly threat- 
ened, yea, presently sometimes with 
pinches, nips and bobs, and other ways 
which I will not name for the honour I 
bear them, so without measure mis- 
ordered, that I think myself in hell 
till time come that I must go to 



\ 

TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 95 

Master Elmer/ who teacheth me so 
gently, so pleasantly, with such fair 
allurements to learning, that I think all 
the time nothing whilst I am with him. 
And when I am called from him I fall 
on weeping, because whatsoever I do else 
but learning is full of grief, trouble, fear 
and whole misliking unto me. And thus 
my book hath been so much my pleasure, 
and bringeth daily to me more pleasure 
and more, that in respect of it, all other 
pleasures, in very deed, be but trifles 
and troubles unto me.' " 

In intellectual training other women 
of the time were as happy. We have 
record that Joanna, daughter of the Earl 
of Arundel, translated orations of 
Isocrates and the Iphigenia of Euripides 
into English ; and her sister, Mary, who 
married the Duke of Norfolk, turned 
Greek originals into Latin. 

There was also the learned Margaret 
Ascham, who in 1570, two years after 

1 John Aylmer. 



96 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

the death of her husband Eoger, **to 
advance,'' she said, *'the good that may 
come of it," published her husband's 
treatise which we know as * * The School- 
master" — a book ** concerning the right 
order of teaching and honesty of living, 
for the good bringing up of children and 
young men. ' ' 

At this time, also, the four daughters 
of Sir Anthony Cooke, tutor of Edward 
VI, became famous. To this day they 
are a wonder. The oldest, Mildred, born 
in 1526, married Lord Burghley, after* 
wards Lord Chancellor for Queen Eliza- 
beth. Legend says she was so skilled 
in Greek th^t she delighted in the works 
of Basil, Chrysostom and other Greek 
Fathers. Upon her death, forty-two 
years after her marriage, her husband 
set down what he called ** Meditations" 
upon her life, and in his writing said: 
** There is no cogitation to be used with 
an intent to recover that which never 
can be had again, that is, to have my 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 97 

dear wife live again in lier mortal body. 
... I ought to comfort myself with the 
remembrance of her many virtues and 
godly actions wherein she continued all 
her life.'' 

Lord Burghley goes on to tell some- 
what of these virtues and actions. His 
list amazes. For our edification we 
should oftener lead this great-hearted 
woman from the world of shades. Four 
times in the year, *^ without knowledge 
from whom it came," says her husband, 
she sent, to all the prisons in London, 
money to buy bread, cheese and drink 
for four hundred persons. In those 
days of irregular imprisonment — ^under 
the prison privations and horrors then 
possible — ^what eminent humanity! 

Sundry times every year, also, she sent 
shirts and smocks to poor people. Also 
money to Oxford that fires might be kept 
in St. John's College on Sundays and 
holidays during winter, when without her 
gift poor scholars would have gone acold. 



98 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

She sent, too, great numbers of books 
to Cambridge and Oxford. She gave 
out wool and flax to be distributed 
among women for making into yarns, 
and after the examination of their spin- 
ning, she often gave back the yarn for 
weaving into cloth. These were a part 
of that good woman ^s godly deeds. 

A sister of hers, Anna, when only 
twenty-two, metaphrased from the Ital- 
ian and published a book of sermons, 
and later she translated from the Latin 
Bishop Jewel's ** Apologia," *Hhe first 
methodical statement of the position of 
the Church of England against the 
Church of R,ome, ' ' and sent her work to 
that reformer with a letter in Greek. 
And she became mother of a noble and 
notable Puritan, Anthony Bacon, and of 
his illustrious brother, Francis, Lord 
Chancellor. 

A third of these sisters, Elizabeth, 
married Sir Thomas Hoby, famed as a 
diplomat and translator, and upon his 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 99 

death took for her second husband Lord 
John Eussel, on whose monument in 
Westminster she inscribed an epitaph in 
Greek, Latin and English. A son of hers 
was a confidential courtier of Queen 
Elizabeth. Katherine, the fourth sister, 
married Sir Henry Killigrew, who served 
Elizabeth in difficult diplomatic mis- 
sions. She was famed for her knowl- 
edge of Hebrew, Greek and her own 
Latin verse. 

You doubtless note that much emphasis 
falls on languages in the education of 
these sixteenth century women, espe- 
cially upon Greek. All tendencies were 
then humanistic, we must remember. 
Greek had lately come to the world 
anew, and had astonished men with its 
wealth of ideas, its analyses and pictures 
of the varying phases of human experi- 
ence. In its rich records the human mind 
seemed to fare in all directions. 

Then, moreover, study of Greek was 
identified with the church reformation 



100 WOKKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

principle — a principle during the times 
of which we speak gaining tremendous 
headway. In the contest between ideas 
of local distribution of powers, and ideas 
of imperial concentration, Greek reason- 
ing and Greek example afforded effective 
artillery to Protesters against religious 
imperialism. With the old church party 
lay in that century such dread of Greek 
scholarship that it worked out a horta- 
tive Latin proverb — **Cave a Graecis, 
ne fias haereticus," beware of the Greeks 
lest you be made a heretic. 

Men and women of those days learned 
languages to enlarge their knowledge of 
what mankind had done, to broaden their 
interest in human achievement. Lan- 
guages were to them a key to unlock 
treasures; a medium for gaining ideas 
and training to right thought. But we 
must not forget that women of the time 
also studied sciences, as sciences were 
then known. Astronomy figures often 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 101 

in their curricula; physics, also, and 
philosophy and history. 

But above all works the Bible in its 
Greek and Hebrew forms, attracted 
them. Those women dwelt, we must 
remember, in a world saturated for cen- 
turies with theology. They longed to 
attain, through their intellect, under- 
standing of the mysteries of their emo- 
tional faith.^ The world of their time 
put completest trust in special, plen- 
ary inspiration of the Hebrew scriptures 
— in whose account lay, let us not forget, 
the story fabulizing the Tree of Knowl- 
edge in the Garden of Eden, where the 
woman was more anxious than the man 
for the fruit. 

We have been speaking of a few of 
the women of this brilliant century, wo- 
men whose lives deepened its thought 

1 In all this ferment were those women studying 
Church Fathers forgetful of what Jerome with strict 
veracity, he said, recorded of the noble Paula and 
her daugrhter Eustochium? 



102 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

and imagination and increased its radi- 
ance. Eecords of others we must pass 
by — and yet we would name Mary Sid- 
ney, Countess of Pembroke ; Lady Mag- 
dalen, mother of Lord Herbert of Cher- 
bury, and *^holy George Herbert, and 
correspondent of John Donne; spirited 
Dorothy Osborne whose devotion blessed 
Sir William Temple; the erratic Lady 
Conway. But we must pass them all 
save one whom no ethics suffer us to 
omit — ^the celebrated Anne, daughter of 
the Earl of Cumberland, who married 
the Earl of Dorset and afterwards the 
Earl of Pembroke. Her life, during 
from 1590 tg 1676, linked the sixteenth 
with the seventeenth century, and in its 
early years had the felicity of a tutor in 
the poet Daniels, an intimate of Shake- 
speare. To many of us to-day she is 
identified as the woman of whom the 
vigorous-minded poet Donne, in one of 
those sudden, home-thrusting phrases 
which distinguish his work — ^in which 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 103 

Donne said, ^ ^ She knew well how to dis- 
course of all things, from predestination 
to sleasilk.'' To her Eichard Brath- 
waite dedicated ^^The English Gentle- 
woman, '^ published in 1631, *^to her,'' 
he wrote, ^* whose true love to vertue 
hath highly ennobled herself e, renowned 
her sexe, honoured her house. ' ' 

* ^ She had a clear soul shining through 
a vivid body,'' wrote another friend of 
hers, Edward Eainbowe, a man whose 
own mother numbered one more woman 
trained in Hebrew, Greek and Latin. 
*^ Although she was skilled in house- 
wifery," Bishop Eainbowe goes on, **and 
in such things in which women are con- 
versant, yet her penetrating wit soared 
up to pry into the highest mysteries 
. . . although she knew wool and flax, 
fine linen and silk, things appertaining 
to the spindle and distaif, yet she could 
open her mouth with wisdom." 

Such were a few of many women who 
distinguished the sixteenth century. 



104 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

Such, then, were the effects on woman- 
kind of the education of women. An old 
English author whose eyes saw and ears 
heard those living latest, a man who 
knew their works, characterizes these 
women in a book he published in 1694, 
and his characterization can not to-day 
be gainsaid: **When Learning first 
came up,'' and in this he refers to the 
Eenaissance which we glimpsed in our 
first paragraphs of this essay, **When 
Learning first came up. Men fancied that 
every Thing could be done by it, and 
they were charmed with the Eloquence 
of its Professors, who did not fail to set 
forth all \is Advantages in the most 
engaging Dress." **It was so very 
modish,'' our author goes on to say, that 
Plato and Aristotle, untranslated, were 
^'frequent Ornaments of Women's 
Closets. One would think by the Effects 
that it was a proper Way of Educating 
of them, since there are no Accounts in 
History of so many very great Women 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 105 

in any Age, as are to be found between 
the Years fifteen and sixteen hundred. ' * ^ 
But the substantial support upon 
which much of the success of this early 
education-of-women movement hinged, 
we must not overlook. These women 
were oftenest of parents gifted with the 
ample riches of inherited estates. They 

I Not only in Britain and its legends of Margaret 
of Anjou and her sustained intrepidity and high- 
hearted struggle, but in other countries of Europe 
were many eminent women — Anne of Britanny, the 
two Margarets of Austria, others who had shown and 
were showing marked capabilities; and Marguerite 
of Navarre, chief patron of letters of the France of 
her time. A woman, in this sixteenth century, 
preached, according to records, in the cathedral of 
Barcelona; a French "woman wrote on medical sub- 
jects; Italian women, such as Beatrice and Isabella 
d'Este, were learned in philosophy and jurispru- 
dence; Olympia Morata filled her father's chair in 
the University of Ferrara while he was ill; Angela 
Merici went forth on a mission of education and 
founded an order of teachers. These were a few out 
of many. The movement penetrated even cloistered 
seclusion and later nuns, such as Maria of Agreda, 
1603-1665, wrote, and sometimes printed, canticles 
on mystic subjects. The German Anna Maria von 
Schurmann, 1607-1678, skilled in Hebrew, Syriac, 
Arabic, Chaldaic, Greek, published what is said to 
be the best exposition of tenets of a reformed, com- 
munistic congregation to which she belonged. 



106 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

were able to employ tutors.^ At the very 
time the women we have named became 
illustrious through their broadened lives, 
an inevitable sequent of humane learn- 
ing, thousands of women with as great 
native abilities, doubtless, remained in 
uncultivated mental strength and seclu- 
sion because their worldly circumstances 
permitted no training, no education to 
distinguish them and grant their natural 
parts service. Even in the works of 
Francis Bacon, learned son of the 
learned Anna Cooke — in his reference 
to education Bacon had in mind men's 
education. We find no intimation that 
a proper training for life is the right of 
every child. Education for women in 

1 Since writing the above I have met the same 
facts stated in "The Boke named The Gouernour," 
by Sir Thomas Elyot, 1490-1546, "Men having sub- 
stance in goods by certain and stable possessions, 
which they may apportionate to their own living 
and bringing up of their children in learning and 
vertues, may (if nature repugn not) cause them to 
be instructed and furnished toward the administra- 
tion of a public weale, that a poor man's son, only 
by his natural wit, without other adminiculation or 
aid, never or seldom may attain to the semblable." 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 107 

the sixteenth century was for those 
women rich enough to employ private 
instructors. They did not *^set young 
maidens to grammar schools/' wrote a 
famous schoolmaster, Eichard Mulcaster, 
whose works lie in the latter half of the 
sixteenth century, *4t was a thing not 
used in my country.'' 

But in the next century, the seven- 
teenth, there came an overturn in the 
idea of women's education, even in the 
education of women of wealth and 
leisure. Why? What had happened? 
The rule **They are most firmly good, 
that best know why" of the Elizabethan 
Sir Thomas Overbury had not failed. 
After the world had seen the noble works 
and distinguished excellence of those 
women of the sixteenth century, what 
could take such opportunities away? 

During the sixteenth century fashion 
had stamped education. Fashion is 
fickle, and now withdrew her approval. 
Education ebbed low in England in the 



108 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

seventeeth century. Intellectual life for 
men as well as women had lost true 
significance.^ 

The seventeenth century was the cen- 
tury of the Stuarts in England, and Eng- 
lish life, especially in the later half-cen- 
tury, suffered spiritual and material 
maladies. Poison of the royal court 
spread throughout the people. And the 
later Stuart fashion was not for learn- 
ing; nor for thinking; nor for honest, 
upright, unselfish life ; nor for searching 
any ancient writ whatever. Eakes of 
both sexes held broad sway — for in- 

1 Even the two universities stood at a low level of 
intellectual strength. — in such inefficiency, in fact, 
that men were for many years, and in many places, 
discussing and determining the function of a univer- 
sity, till, in the next century, they had come, in the 
person of Dr. John Arbuthnot in "An Essay on the 
Usefulness of Mathematical Learning," 1700, to lay- 
ing down laws about what we now judge past discus- 
sion, viz.: "Nobody at an University is to be taught 
the practice of any rule without the true and solid 
reason and demonstration of the same ... an Uni- 
versity ... is designed for solid and true Learn- 
ing. ... It is from the Universities that they must 
come, who are to remedy the defects of the Arts, and 
therefore nothing must be taken on trust there." 



TORCH-BEAKERS FOR WOMEN 109 

stance, the Duchess of Cleveland, the 
Duchess of Portsmouth, Nell Gwyn, and 
their companion libertine, the king. To 
such creatures education in any phase 
was of tenest a mark for gibes, the mental 
stimulation and training of women a butt 
for scurrilities. It was, wrote Dryden 
who was of it, a *4ubrique and adulterate 
age." 

In foregone centuries nunneries had 
served as *' she-schools " *^ wherein," 
said Thomas Fuller in his Church His- 
tory, **the girls and maids of the neigh- 
borhood were taught to read and work. ' ' 
Such training young women needed, for 
*Hhe sharpness of their wits and the 
suddenness of their conceits, which their 
enemies must allow unto them," declared 
the ever-worthy divine, ** might by educa- 
tion be improved into a judicious solid- 
ity, and that adorned with arts which 
now they want, not because they cannot 
learn but are not taught them. ' ' This of 
seventeenth century daughters. Seven- 



110 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

teentli century sons their parents of 
ample means trained somewhat lightly, 
by private tutors.^ To raise the plane 
of the boys' instruction clear-eyed, 
thoughtful men wrote treatises on edu- 
cation that are distinguished to our day. 
For they recognized the fall from the ele- 
vation of the sixteenth century genera- 
tions, and its meaning to the life of the 
nation. 

But Milton's tractate, published in 
1644, plans only for what Milton names 
**our noble and gentle youth," and calls 
*'a complete and generous education that 
which fits a man to perform justly, skil- 
fully, and magnanimously all the offices, 
both public and private, of peace and 

1 Obvious results of these conditions Swift reported 
in the next century, in his "Essay on Modern Edu- 
cation"; "The current opinion prevails that the study 
of Greek and Latin is loss of time; that the public 
schools, by mingling sons of noblemen with those 
of the vulgar, engage the former in bad company; 
that whipping breaks the spirit of lads well born; 
that universities make young men pedants; that 
to dance, fence, speak French, and know how to 
behave yourself among great persons of both sexes, 
comprehends the whole duty of a gentleman." 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 111 

war." Not in all the learned concision 
of the tract is there one glimpse of edu- 
cation for women, nor for the youth and 
men less prosperous in worldly goods. 
The development of these two ideas, the 
education of women and of the people at 
large, was fated to hang together. 

Three years after Milton's publication, 
the distinguished economist. Sir William 
Petty, first English advocate of elemen- 
tary trade schools and of other instruc- 
tion of a practical character for the 
democratic whole, declared that *^all 
Children ,of above seven years old may 
be presented to'' the education he advo- 
cated, *'none to be excluded by reason 
of the poverty and unability of their 
Parents, for thereby it hath come to 
passe, that many are now holding the 
Plough, which might have beene made 
fit to steere the State." 

Sir William Petty probably first in 
England argued for teaching girls 
domestic science. One more quotation 



112 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

from *^The Advice of W. P. to Mr. 
Samuel Hartlib for The Advancement of 
some Particular Parts of Learning," 
1647. ' ' We see Children, ' ' he says, ' ' to 
delight in Drums, Pipes, Fiddels, Guns 
made of Elder-sticks and bellowes noses, 
piped Keyes, etc., for painting Flags and 
Ensignes with Elder-berries and Corn- 
poppy, making ships with Paper, and 
setting even Nut-shells a swimming, 
handling the tooles of workemen as soone 
as they turne their backs, and trying to 
worke themselves, fishing, fowling, hunt- 
ing, setting sprengs and traps for birds 
and other animals, making pictures in 
their writing bookes, making Tops, Gigs, 
and Whirligigs . . . with a million more 
besides. And for the Females, they will 
be making Pyes with Clay, making their 
Babies Clothes, and dressing them there- 
with, they will spit leaves on sticks, as 
if they were roasting meate, they will 
imitate all the talke and Actions which 
they observe in their Mother and her 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 113 

Gossips. ... By all which it is most 
evident that Children do most naturally 
delight in things and are most capable 
of learning them." 

During this seventeenth century, also, 
John Locke, in his rich and suggestive 
** Thoughts on Education" recognized 
the fact that the word ** children" meant 
youngsters of both sexes. **The men- 
tion of girls" brings sound advice for 
their physical being. But Locke 's direc- 
tions for teaching and training for life is 
for boys — ^till *Hhe young gentleman be- 
ing got within view of matrimony, it is 
time to leave him to his mistress. ' ' But 
not a word of the training of the mind 
and emotion of the girl in whose charge 
and direction his social system permitted 
the young man to be *4eft." 

An approximately true attitude of the 
best this seventeeth century could offer 
toward the education of women is illus- 
trated by **The English G-entleman" and 
^*The English Gentlewoman," books 



114 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

Kichard Brathwaite put out about 1631. 
For the English gentleman is a chapter 
on the values of education. For the 
English gentlewoman not a vestige, ex- 
cept the dedication to which we have re- 
ferred. 

Another book also makes clear that 
century's estimates — a book by the pro- 
foundly world-wise first Marquis of 
Halifax, published in 1688, the ** Lady's 
New Year Gift, or Advice to a Daugh- 
ter." It is a series of essays treating 
of a wealthy woman's everyday govern- 
ment of herself toward religion, husband, 
family, children, domestics, and speaking 
of conversation, friendship, censure, 
vanity and affectation, pride, diversions, 
dancing, but advising nothing of that 
substance which, in the century before, 
the sixteenth, was thought desirable and 
essential for women of fine breeding — a 
training in sound sentiment and general 
knowledge, the substance of books seri- 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 115 

ously treating the physical and spiritual 
world. 

The wit and reputation of the Marquis 
of Halifax, his knowledge of men and 
manners, his strength of characteriza- 
tion, the times' scarcity of printed matter 
recognizing women's need of advisory 
instruction, sent his '* Advice" through 
many editions in its own English and 
in translations. Pointed, epigrammatic 
phrases mark the work, as one might ex- 
pect from the author's vivacious social 
life. For instance, in advising '*my 
dear" to cleave to a broad, rational 
faith in which she had been bred, he 
says, * * Eeligion is exalted reason, refined 
and sifted from the grosser parts of it." 
*'It is Morality improved and raised to 
its height. ' ' ^ This daughter for whom 
Lord Halifax affectionately wrote his 

1 A sentence, it is curious to recall, forerunning 
by almost two centuries Matthew Arnold's oft- 
repeated definition of religion as morality touched 
by emotion. 



116 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

book, later became mother of a son who 
grew to be the worldly and brilliant Lord 
Chesterfield. The estimate this son 
made of his mother and her human 
sisters you shall see further on. 

One more testimony from this seven- 
teenth century, and that from the works 
of the ardent Bishop Burnet, whose busy- 
body proclivities immeasurably hurt the 
cause of the education of women. His 
autobiography, 1710 (!), written toward 
the end of his arduous lif e,^ tells of the 
education of *^my children," of **my 
sons,'' but makes not mention of his two 
daughters. And then in his essay on 
Queen Mai;y of England, wife of Prince 
William of Orange, the bishop uncon- 
sciously expresses himself by what he 
does not say. Queen Mary, he wrote 
after her death, * ^had read the best books 
in the three languages that were almost 
equally familiar to her." **Next to the 

1 His "Thoughts on Education" were published 
about 1668, when he was still a young man. 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 117 

best subjects, ' ' that is religion, ' ' sbe be- 
stowed most of her time on books of 
history. . . . She was a good judge as 
well as a great lover of poetry. . . . 
So tender she was of poetry, . . . that 
she had a particular concern in the de- 
filement, or rather the prostitution of 
the Muses among us.'' In this last 
sentence the bishop must refer to the 
drama of their day. ^*She went far in 
natural history and perspective," he 
continues, *^as she was very exact in 
geography. She thought sublime things 
too high flights for the sex'' — ^by these 
last two words the bishop means women. 
**The sex" ^^she oft talked of with a 
liberty that was very lively,"^ further 
testifies her ecclesiastical friend. 

It would be interesting to match the 

iThis phrase, "a liberty that was very lively ,** 
recalls the second line of a popular rhyme charac- 
terizing the royal family of that day: 

"King William thinks all, 

Queen Mary talks all, 

Prince George drinks all. 

And Princess Anne eats all." 



118 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

queen's lively talk against the convic- 
tions of a subject of her realm, Mary 
As tell, whose influence in all the years 
since that time has far transcended that 
of the queen. When Mary, the narrow- 
natured queen, was talking '^with a 
liberty that was very lively,'' Mary, the 
large-natured subject, was making pro- 
found deductions upon conditions con- 
trolling their country-women. 

But before we take up the work of this 
great-hearted English woman, Mary 
Astell, and the enduring significance of 
what she said and did, let us turn for a 
moment to France and to the then 
French attitude toward educating 
women. 

In the sixteenth century, Montaigne 
addressed his distinguished essay, **0n 
the Education of Children," to a woman, 
Diana of Foix. The writing was doubt- 
less in behalf of Diana's son, and evi- 
dences most engagingly, with citations 
from learned ancients and also authors 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 119 

of Montaigne's own time, what should 
serve to prepare youth for polite life. 

Later in France, between the years 
1618 and 1650, the abilities of a woman 
with a marked gift of social organization, 
whom we know as the Marquise de Ram- 
bouillet, very successfully brought to- 
gether at her house diverse elements of 
life in the French capital. Through the 
foundation of such a union women be- 
came a distinct power and influence. In- 
stances pertained precisely as in Eng- 
land : — ^Wealth was able to command in- 
struction and to give daughters a thor- 
oughly careful education. Such learning 
had been possible to the coterie centring 
at the Hotel Rambouillet and working a 
lasting influence on French letters — 
stamping French letters with a spirit re- 
maining to our day. Among the mem- 
bers was the sensible and proper Made- 
leine Scudery, 1607-1701 ; the Madame de 
Sevigne, 1626-1696, whose guardian fol- 
lowed fashion and made her a learned 



120 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

lady ; also her wise and intimate life-long 
friend, Madame de la Fayette, 1634-1692, 
first of modern novel-writers definitely 
to draw character and sentiment. 

Doubtless a result of the dominance of 
the Hotel Eambouillet assemblies was 
the attempt at broadening the education 
of French women generally — the attempt 
seen, for instance, in Fontenelle's 
** Plurality of Worlds.'' In form of 
conversations between a scientist and a 
woman, this book trades upon the knowl- 
edge that a title, even in France, would 
catch the popular ear, and it makes the 
woman a marchioness. **I have intro- 
duced a lady, to be instructed in things 
of which she never heard," say Fon- 
tenelle in his preface, **and I have made 
use of this fiction to render the book the 
more acceptable and give encouragement 
to gentlewomen" — ^note the encourage- 
ment is to gentlewomen, not to women — 
**by the example of one of their sex, who 
without any supernatural parts or tine- 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 121 

ture of learning, understood wliat was 
said to her. ... I shall desire no more 
of the fair sex than that they will read 
this system of philosophy, with the same 
application that they do a romance or 
novel when they would retain the plot, or 
find out all its beauties.'' 

In France at this time lived a born 
teacher, Madame de Maintenon, a wo- 
man happiest when instructing, to whom 
fate had granted the training of children 
of Louis XIV. In the later eighties of 
this seventeenth century, after Madame 
de Maintenon had become the wife of 
Louis XIV, she founded the school-con- 
vent, St. Cyr, for poverty-stricken, noble- 
blooded French girls — for their instruc- 
tion in the conduct of life. The ideas 
she used as basis of her work had al- 
ready gone forth from English Milton 
and Locke; and especially they were in 
the less ordered ** Advice" of the Mar- 
quis of Halifax. She seized upon and 
applied suggestions of these writers, and 



122 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

in 1692 published lier first *'Avis aux 
Demoiselles." With French brightness 
and artful lightness she put her advices 
in the form of dialogues — on such sub- 
jects as devotion, good humor, friend- 
ships, generosity, habit; or entitles by 
proverbs, as **the opportunity makes the 
thief," ''familiarity breeds contempt." 
Delighting to teach, this woman kept up 
her instruction into the next century, to 
1715 or later. 

Now let us turn back to England. In 
this seventeenth century there had been, 
we have seen, distinguished writings on 
education from Milton, Petty, Locke. 
After schoolmaster methods and experi- 
ence others, also, were not lacking, for 
instance Charles Hoole's. But among 
them all words advocating solid and sub- 
stantial provender for girls' minds are 
difficult to find — except, perchance, those 
of Sir William Petty 's offering. Women 
growing to grace in these times and 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 123 

subject to, or voluntarily seeking, the 
discipline and rich mindedness of the 
preceding century were few, and un- 
doubtedly in families where traditions of 
the sixteenth century **New Learning'' 
still abode. 

Yet, this century had women whose 
native genius was not lost. There 
was the exuberant, erratic Margaret, 
Duchess of Newcastle, with a fertile pen. 
There was the learned Dorothy Paking- 
ton, to whom for many years report 
ascribed the famous book **The Whole 
Duty of Man. ' ' Among its numbers was 
Katharine Philips, born in 1631, friend 
of Dr. Jeremy Taylor, Cowley and Henry 
Vaughn, a poetess called ** matchless'' 
by her associates, ** perfect mistress of 
the French tongue," an old author de- 
clares, learned also in Italian — a lady 
whom smallpox carried off before she 
had reached middle age. She **owed 
not her glory to a beauteous face. ' ' 



124 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

*'It was her radiant soul that shone within, 
Which struck a lustre through her outward 

skin; 
That did her lips and cheeks with roses dye, 
Advanced her height, and sparkled in her 

eye." 

Anne Killigrew, who penned this de- 
scription of a sister singer, died also in 
these times, in her twenty-fifth year, she 
too from the terrible scourge of our 
ancestors ^ — and of her Dryden sang a 
song of sentiment so elevated and ex- 
pression so exquisite, that Dr. Johnson 
thought it the noblest ode in our lan- 
guage: 

• 
**Art she had none," sang Dryden, **yet 

wanted none, 

For nature did that want supply . . . 



ered from — as Dorothy Osborne just before her mar- 
riage to William Temple, but with loss of her 
beauty; and Lucy Apsley before her union with her 
devoted John Hutchinson, "whose constancy God 
recompensed by restoring her as well as she was be- 
fore." 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 125 

Such noble vigour did her verse adorn, 
That it seem'd borrow 'd where 'twas only 
born/' 

But in the latter part of this seven- 
teenth century, at the home of a mer- 
chant of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, were 
growing a heart and mind not quite 
understood of the then poets, and of a 
sort despised by the reigning court. 
While Madame de Maintenon was work- 
ing out her practical experiment, of 
which we have spoken, at St. Cyr in 
France, Mary Astell was maturing ideas 
for the education of English girls. To 
both English and French reformer 
Locke *s great essay must have been rich, 
in suggestion. Doubtless Mary Astell 
read the work, published in 1690, when 
she was about twenty-two, an age when 
life turns to ideals and judgment ripens 
for future work. 

Mary Astell was without the self -dis- 
trust and timidity that afflict women 
whose lives are secluded. She had the 



126 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

character that forced what she thought 
upon the world. She had also the un- 
usual capacity of generating ideas, a 
rarer gift than is commonly supposed. 
She had a mother wit. Of one of her 
books, *' Essays in Defence of the Female 
Sex,'' published in 1696, she said, **most 
men pronounce it a performance above 
the ability of a woman," ** think the 
style too masculine," but she *^ makes 
bold to advance that let them form them- 
selves with equal care, by the same 
models, and they will no more be able to 
discern a man's style from a woman's 
than they can tell whether this was 
written with a goose quill or a gander's." 
Now, in the year 1697, this educated, 
large-minded woman, then twenty-nine 
years old, sympathetic with the needs of 
her generation, understanding estimates 
that had hardened and narrowed the 
minds of her countrymen during the 
seventeenth century just coming to an 
end, moved by the lamentable lack of 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 127 

facilities for women's education in her 
day, this Mary Astell published in a 
* * Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the 
Advancement of Their True and Great- 
est Interests'' plans for the formation 
of a women's college. There were, you 
will see, two great distinguishing marks 
in this proposal; one, the democratic 
idea of education for many, for those 
unable to afford specific and costly in- 
struction, the giving to many advantages 
theretofore reserved for the few ; and the 
other, the idea of the bringing forward 
the personality of women, the right of 
a woman to develop herself. 

In Miss Astell's own words her plan 
was **to erect ... a retreat from the 
world for those who desire that advan- 
tage, but likewise an institution and 
previous discipline to fit us to do the 
greatest good in it" — the world. That 
is the keynote of her proposal for a 
women's college — to fit us to do the 
greatest good in the world. What better 



128 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

shall we find anywhere? An eminent 
philosopher, Herbert Spencer, has told 
us that the function of education is **to 
prepare us for complete living." How 
better is this definition than Mary As- 
telPs? His is couched in scientific 
phrase, hers in literary. Both are alike, 
and both bear like fruits. Hers foreruns 
his by more than two hundred and fifty 
years. 

**No vows nor irrevocable obliga- 
tions," continued Miss Astell, were to 
keep the members longer than they de- 
sired. There was to be **a course of 
solid, instructive preaching and catechiz- 
ing," for '^ignorance and a narrow edu- 
cation lay the foundation of vice. ' ' You 
see her plan sketches a college not unlike 
our modern houses of deaconesses. 
Learning, however, was to prevail over 
religious offices, and that marks the secu- 
larity of her idea.^ 

1 "I have often heard," wrote Miss Astell in her 
"Essay in Defence of the Female Sex," "I have often 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 129 

Mary AstelPs proposal was before the 
world the last of the seventeeth century. 
Fashion and its prejudices, * ' the usurpa- 
tion of men and the tyranny of custom, ' ' 
Miss Astell wrote, were against its ac- 
ceptance. **The men, by interest and 
inclination, are so generally engaged 
against us,*' she said, **that it is not to 
be expected that any one man of wit 
should arise so generous as to engage in 
our quarrel and to be the champion of 

heard some of our considerable merchants blame the 
conduct of our countrymen in this point, that they 
breed our women so ignorant of business; whereas 
were they taught arithmetic and other arts which 
require not much bodily strength, they might supply 
the places of abundance of lusty men now employed 
in sedentary business; which might be a mighty 
profit to the nation, by sending those men to em- 
ployments where hands and strength are more re- 
quired, especially at this time when we are in such 
want of people. Besides that it might prevent the 
ruin of many families, which is often occasioned by 
the death of merchants in full business leaving their 
accounts perplexed and embroiled to a widow and 
orphans understanding nothing of the husband's and 
father's business. That occasions the rending and 
oftentimes the utter confounding of a fair estate; 
which might be prevented if the wife but understood 
merchants' accounts and were acquainted with the 
books." 



130 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

our sex against the injuries and oppres- 
sions of his own. Those romantic days 
are over, and there is not so much as a 
Don Quixote of the quill left to succor 
distressed damsels." 

But a knight did appear, a knight not 
in inherited armor, but from the people, 
a foresighted journalist and sympathizer 
with losing causes, Daniel Defoe, from 
boyhood an uncompromising fighter in 
the war of the liberation of humanity. 
Defoe advocated high schools for girls. 
He amply acknowledged the ingenuity of 
Miss Astell's plan, and set forth his own 
ideas of how the college building should 
be situated **to render intriguing danger- 
ous ' ' — ^heaven save the mark ! — and what 
the general regulations of an academy 
for women should be. He would have 
an act of parliament making it a felony 
without clergy for a man to enter by 
force or fraud into its house. 

**I have often thought of it as one of 
the most barbarous customs in the 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 131 

world/* declared Defoe, **that we deny 
the advantages of learning to women. 
. . . Their youth is spent to teach them to 
stitch and sew and make bauhles. They 
are taught to read, indeed, and perhaps 
to write their names or so, and that is 
the height of a woman's education. . . . 
The soul is placed in the body like a 
rough diamond, and must be polished, 
or the lustre of it will never appear ; and 
it is manifest that as the rational soul 
distinguishes us from brutes, so educa- 
tion carries on the distinction and makes 
some less brutish than others. . . . Why, 
then, should women be denied the bene- 
fit of instruction! If knowledge and 
understanding had been useless addi- 
tions to the sex, God Almighty would 
never have given them capacities." It 
*4ooks as if we denied women the ad- 
vantages of education for fear they 
should vie with the men in their improve- 
ments." **The great distinguishing 
difference which is seen in the world 



132 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

between men and women is in their 
education. ... I can not think God 
furnished them with . . . souls capable 
of the same accomplishments with men, 
and all to be only stewards of our houses, 
cooks and slaves." What better knight 
of the quill could Mary Astell have 
found! 

Eeinforced by Defoe's ^* Essay," Miss 
Astell's suggestions were before the eyes 
of English readers by 1699. Three 
years passed and Anne came to the 
throne. Plans of a college for women 
appealed to this queen. They appealed, 
also, to other women so established in 
worldly goods as to be able to express 
their convictions through material gifts. 
Such women publicly endorsed the idea 
of the college and offered money for its 
realization. 

Of all these f oreworkers, the one whose 
identification with the proposal has been 
best preserved to us was the beautiful 
and exemplary Lady Elizabeth Hastings, 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 133 

a born idealist, a woman of marked per- 
sonality, an inheritor of a considerable 
fortune — that woman of whom Eichard 
Steele wrote bis famous *Ho love ber is 
a liberal education ... it being tbe 
nature of all love to create an imitation 
of tbe beloved person in tbe lover/' 
Tbis Elizabeth Hastings offered a con- 
siderable sum to tbe new women's 
college, toward its material expression. 
* * Tbe scheme given in Miss Astell 's pro- 
posal seemed so reasonable," said one 
of ber contemporaries, **and wrought so 
far upon a certain great lady, that she 
had designed to give ten thousand 
pounds towards erecting a sort of college 
for the education and improvement of 
the female sex ; and as a retreat for these 
ladies who, nauseating the parade of the 
world, might here find a happy recess 
from the noise and hurry of it. But the 
design coming to the ears of Bishop 
Burnet" — this is the Bishop Burnet, 
remember, whose essay on Queen Mary 



134 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

told of his lack of sympathy with radical 
ideas of his time ^ — this Bishop Burnet 
^immediately sent to that lady/' Eliza- 
beth Hastings, '^and so powerfully 
remonstrated against it . . . that he 
utterly frustrated the noble design. ' ' 

A spiritual adviser, in other words, 
appealed to Elizabeth Hastings' ideal- 
ism. Her idealism worked through 
religious lines. The women's college 
lost her gift, without which it could not 
establish itself. Eventually she be- 
queathed to Queen's College, Oxford, a 
large sum to support **poor scholars" 
from twelve schools. It would be inter- 
esting to know if this gift to Oxford, a 
gift which to this day affords educa- 
tional opportunities to men, not to 
women, was money Elizabeth Hastings 
had originally determined to appropriate 
to Mary Astell's women's college. 

1 Writers of the bishop's own time say he was 
untruthful and indulged in malicious insinuation. 
For instance, Swift wrote "Malice" alongside Bur- 
net's account of Prior's start in life. 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 135 

Eakish writers of those times, also, 
invoked conservative sentiment and 
threw their influence with that of the 
bishop. The famous Tatler published, 
insolently says its introduction, **for 
entertainment of the fair sex in honor 
of whom I have invented the title," used 
the potent weapon of ridicule against 
the plan of a college. Some real, or 
fancied, condition of women was often 
the butt of Eichard Steele, The Tatler's 
chief writer; *^the most agreeable rake," 
said a man of his day, **who ever trod 
the rounds of indulgence. ' ' ^ 

The Tatler of the 23rd of June, 1709, 
jeered at Miss Astell, sketched her under 
the names of **Platonne" and **Madon- 
ella," and in the lubric expression com- 
mon to the periodical, mocked at the 
college she had suggested. The wits 
treated the scheme with the sort of criti- 

1 "I shall not carry my humility so far as to call 
myself a vicious man," wrote Steele in The Tatler'a 
last number (271), "but at the same time must con- 
fess, my life at best is but pardonable." 



136 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

cism Swift called *^ coffee-house.'' Not 
all their story, dated by the way from 
White's Chocolate-house,^ is to-day 
printable, according to present ideas of 
decency. This, however, is the outline: 

A troop of wags and libertines make 
their way into the grounds of the college 
presided over by **Madonella," **pro- 
jectrix of the foundation," on the pre- 
tence, after ** travelling England," of 
wishing to bear the fame of **a Protes- 
tant nunnery" to foreign lands. With 
great show of '^ solemn impudence" the 
invaders win over the inmates, and the 
broad humor of the story makes it plain 
that the sequent parental lives of the 
women and the wags wiped out the col- 
lege. You see the tale meant to make 
the ideal absurd. 

A few weeks after this elegant irony 
The Tatler again refers to **Madon- 
ella" as having *4aid a scheme of a 

1 "The common rendezvous," says Swift in his 
"Essay on Modern Education," "of infamous sharp- 
ers and noble cullies." 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 137 

college for young damsels; where (in- 
stead of scissors, needles, and samplers), 
pens, compasses, quadrants, books, man- 
uscripts, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew are 
to take up their time. Only on holidays 
the students will, for moderate exercise, 
be allowed to divert themselves with the 
use of some light and valuable weapons,' ' 
says the ridiculer, **and proper care will 
be taken to give them at least a super- 
ficial tincture of the ancient and modern 
Amazonian tactics. ' ' 

Such attention from The Tatler 
evidence that serious discussion of 
women's intellectual training affected its 
world. Mary Astell's ideas had been 
planted in the English people's mind — 
not a warm soil, nor one ready at stimu- 
lating new seed, but a soil, when once 
a vigorous thought has enrooted, lending 
nourishment for sure, steady growth. 

This implanting, we must remember, 
happened at the beginning of the 
eighteenth century, when literature was 



138 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

finding new expression and new activ- 
ities. In writers who made the Queen 
Anne and immediately later times 
famous, we may expect to find witnesses 
of the germination of Miss Astell 's ideas. 
Such were bringing messages. For in- 
stance, while debauchees and pleasure- 
haunters of London were ridiculing edu- 
cation for women, Mary Pierrepont — ^we 
know her better as Lady Mary Wortley 
Montague — ^was making her translation 
of Epictetus, and in July, 1710 — she then 
numbered barely twenty-one years — ^was 
sending it to Bishop Burnet. **My sex 
is usually forbid studies of this nature," 
she said in the letter that went with the 
manuscript, * * and folly reckoned so much 
our proper sphere, we are sooner par- 
doned any excesses of that than the least 
pretensions to reading or good sense. 
We are permitted no books but such as 
tend to the weakening and effeminating 
of the mind. Our natural defects are 
every way indulged, and it is looked 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 139 

upon as in a degree criminal to improve 
our reason, or fancy we have any. We 
are taught to place all our art in adorn- 
ing our outward forms, and permitted, 
without reproach, to carry that custom 
even to extravagancy, while our minds 
are entirely neglected, and, by disuse of 
reflections, filled with nothing but the 
trifling objects our eyes are daily enter- 
tained with." How much that that 
young soul discriminatingly saw more 
than two hundred years ago is apt for 
us to-day! 

The new ideas Joseph Addison also 
reflects in the Spectator of 1711. 
** Women's amusements seem contrived 
for them,'* says Mr. Addison, *^ rather as 
they are women, than as they are reason- 
able creatures. . . . The toilet is their 
scene of business, and the right adjust- 
ing of their hair the principal employ- 
ment of their lives. The sorting of a 
suit of ribbons is reckoned a very good 
morning's work; and if they make an 



140 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

excursion to a mercer's or a toyshop, so 
great a fatigue makes them unfit for any- 
thing else all the day after. Their more 
serious occupations are sewing and em- 
broidery, and their greatest drudgery 
the preparation of jellies and sweet- 
meats. This, I say, is the state of ordi- 
nary women; though I know there are 
multitudes of those of a more elevated 
life and conversation, that move in an 
exalted sphere of knowledge and virtue, 
that join all the beauties of the mind to 
the ornaments of dress, and inspire a 
kind of awe and respect, as well as love, 
into their male beholders." 

Ordinary wbmen, continued Mr. Addi- 
son, in a later Spectator, ordinary 
women ^^ consider only the drapery of 
the species, and never cast away a 
thought on those ornaments of the mind 
that make persons illustrious in them- 
selves, and useful to others. When wo- 
men are thus perpetually dazzling one 
another's imaginations, and filling their 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 141 

heads with nothing but colors, it is no 
wonder that they are more attentive to 
the superficial parts of life than the solid 
and substantial blessings of it. . . . In 
a word, lace and ribbons, silver and gold 
galloons, with the like glittering gew- 
gaws are so many lures to women of weak 
minds or low educations, and, when arti- 
ficially displayed, are able to fetch down 
the most airy coquette from the wildest 
of her flights and rambles. ' ' 

Mary AstelPs ideas worked still fur- 
ther in Mr. Addison's mind, as the 
Guardian of 1713, September 8th, 
evinces. In reading the quotations, note 
how completely the most accomplished 
literary critic of his generation seems to 
have forgotten the illumination of the 
women of the sixteenth century. **I 
have often wondered,'' says Addison, 
'*that learning is not thought a proper 
ingredient in the education of a woman of 
quality or fortune. Since they have the 
same improvable minds as the male part 



142 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

of the species, why should they not be 
cultivated by the same method! Why 
should reason be left to itself in one of 
the sexes, and be disciplined with so much 
care in the other ? ' ' Why, indeed ? 

Years passed in these eighteenth cen- 
tury discussions of the women's question. 
Negation such as Bishop Burnet's and 
Eichard Steele 's once more gained voice. 
The great genius of Jonathan Swift 
witnesses. In his admirably cogent 
*^ Essay on Modern Education" Swift 
speaks not a word about the education 
of women, nor of boys at large — of rich 
and noble boys alone. Moreover, in his 
paper **0f the Education of Ladies" he 
says, *'In this debate those whom we call 
men and women of fashion are only to 
be understood, not merchants, trades- 
men, or others of such occupations, who 
are not supposed to have a share in a 
liberal education." This from Swift, a 
man of tender and sympathetic heart for 
the benighted and oppressed! But in 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 143 

what we quote he undoubtedly reflected 
all he saw and heard. 

Lord Chesterfield, a man whose fame 
now rests upon his ** Letters/' set out 
still more pronounced opposition to 
Mary AstelPs ideas. Chesterfield, you 
will recall, was grandson of that Mar- 
quis of Halifax whose book of ** Advice 
to a Daughter," is referred to on fore- 
going page 114. Fifty years after his 
grandsire had written, Chesterfield as- 
sumed — let us call it by its right name, 
it was pure assumption even if he was a 
man of brilliant wit and solid knowledge 
— Chesterfield assumed to lay out a 
*^ Female Province,*' * Whatever," he 
magnificently declared *^has not been 
particularly assigned by nature to ours'' 
— to men's. ** Man's Province," he had 
already proclaimed, ^4s universal, and 
comprehends everything, from the cul- 
ture of the earth, to the government of 
it." **I leave 'em," he magnanimously 
declares, as if the partition of human life 



144 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

and work lay at his will, **I leave 'em 
[women] a mighty empire, Love, There 
they reign absolutely, and by unques- 
tioned right, while beauty supports their 
throne. They have all the talents re- 
quisite for that soft empire, and the 
ablest of our sex can not contend with 
'em in the profound knowledge and con- 
duct of those arcana." Continuing his 
theme he takes a glance at women in some 
other phase than beauty ruling her em- 
pire, and serenely posits that those **who 
are deposed by years, or accidents, or 
those who by nature were never qualified 
to reign, should content themselves with 
the private .care and economy of their 
families, and the diligent discharge of 
domestic duties." 

Such balderdash Common Sense, or 
The Englishman's Journal^ of London, 
printed in the year 1737. To a reader 
of to-day it carries no evidence that Lord 
Chesterfield had his tongue in his cheek 
when he wrote it — ^that like some of our 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 145 

own times ' writers he was trying to stifle 
thought by pretty and pretentious buf- 
fooneries, by saying nothings elabo- 
rately. The impudence with which he 
would mould the lives of half the human 
race he solemnly conceals. Later by 
some eleven years, his real estimate of 
women he set out in those ** Letters" 
which are still a marvel of parental love, 
ambition for offspring, and exquisite 
observation of human life — ^letters which 
create in the mind of the reflective reader 
horror at possible results of the inculca- 
tion of graces of manner. The follow- 
ing is a part of what he said. In saying 
it he not only made plain the mask that 
Chesterfield himself wore, but published 
also the artificiality of his times. Bear 
in mind, when reading it, that the son to 
whom this father wrote was then sixteen 
years old ; 

*^ Women, then, are only children of a 
larger growth ; they have an entertaining 
tattle, and sometimes wit; but for solid 



146 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

reasoning, good sense, I never knew one 
in my life that had it, or who reasoned or 
acted consequentially for four-and- 
twenty hours together. . . . Their 
beauty neglected or controverted, their 
age increased, or their supposed under- 
standings depreciated, instantly kindles 
their little passions, and overturns any 
system of consequential conduct, that in 
their most reasonable moments they 
might have been capable of forming. A 
man of sense only trifles with them, plays 
with them, humors and flatters them, as 
he does with a sprightly, forward child ; 
but he neither consults them about, nor 
trusts them wijth serious matters ; though 
he often makes them believe that he does 
both ; which is the thing in the world that 
they are proud of; for they love mightily 
to be dabbling in business (which by the 
way they always spoil) ; and being justly 
distrustful, that men in general look 
upon them in a trifling light, they almost 
adore that man, who talks more seriously 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 147 

to them, and who seems to consult them ; 
I say, who seems; for weak men really 
do, but wise men only seem to do it. No 
flattery is either too high or two low for 
them. They will greedily swallow the 
highest, and gratefully accept the low- 
est; and you may safely flatter any 
woman, from her understanding down 
to the exquisite taste of her fan. Women 
who are either indisputably beautiful, 
or indisputably ugly, are best flattered 
upon the score of their understandings : 
but those who are in a state of medi- 
ocrity, are best flattered upon their 
beauty, or at least their graces ; for every 
woman, who is not absolutely ugly, 
thinks herself handsome; but not hear- 
ing often that she is so, is the more 
grateful, and the more obliged to the 
few who tell her so: whereas a decided 
and conscious beauty looks upon every 
tribute paid to her beauty only as her 
due; but wants to shine, and to be con- 
sidered on the side of her understand- 



148 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

ing. ... It is, therefore, absolutely 
necessary to manage, please and flatter 
them : and never to discover the least 
marks of contempt, which is what they 
never forgive." 

Poor Lord Chesterfield! His charac- 
terization betrays such a warping of soul 
that it is not worth analysis, or refuta- 
tion. What could any woman of sense do 
but turn it aside with such merry words 
as Portia's: ^^God made him, and there- 
fore let him pass for a man. In truth 
I know it is a sin to be a mocker : But 
he ! ! r' In all Chesterfield wrote in this 
** Letter,'' there is, you see, no thought 
that human nature is pliant, ductile, a 
stampable thing, that it responds to its 
environment — in short, that the women 
this astute man of the world sketched re- 
flected their training and the men who 
surrounded them — that their world de- 
manded falsities and lies and they had 
met the call. And yet Chesterfield had 
human sympathies, as those last words 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 149 

he spoke testify; when a visitor entered 
and lie had only life enough to murmur 
''Give Dayrolles a chair." 

Starting out with a lately published 
plan for a women's college, venturing un- 
der Queen Anne to put the plan into ma- 
terial expression, the eighteenth cen- 
tury had, when more than a third of its 
course was run, come to this estimate of 
Chesterfield's. Its years that followed 
brought manifold contentions for and 
against the education of women. There 
were many besmirched reputations^ — it 
was an age when Dunciads and Letters 
easily blackened names, in allusion, for 
instance, to Mary Montague, Eliza Hay- 
wood, Susanna Centlivre; and when 
Pope aggravated his verse reference by 
author's notes upon the '^profligate li- 
centiousness of scribblers (for the most 
part of that sex which ought least to be 
capable of such malice and impudence)." 
Still, whatever the report we may rest 
assured of one truth — ^the women were 



150 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

as good as the men who vilified them and 
made them a target for slander. 

Out of the countless dead of the time 
rise a close contemporary of Mary 
Astell, who was also a noteworthy poet, 
Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea; 
and famous and witty Catherine Barton, 
niece of Sir Isaac Newton, **to whom he 
gave the best of education," testifies a 
relative — Catherine Barton to whom 
Swift in letters to Stella repeatedly re- 
fers, **I love her better than anybody," 
he at one time wrote. Then there was 
the charming Molly Lepell, wife of Lord 
Hervey — the '*Lord Fanny" and 
* * Sporus ' ' of Pope. 

Schools, builded somewhat after the 
old-time convent model, were now not 
uncommon for women. That genial 
Scotsman, author of the ^^Art of Polit- 
ical Lying" and the tracts of **John 
Bull," Dr. John Arbuthnot, in his 
** Manifesto of Lord Peter" as to char- 
acteristics of a consort, addressed **all 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 151 

Mistresses of Boarding-Schools" — ^which 
proves such schools. Ideals and ideas 
informing their instruction stand forth 
fairly in The Rambler of 1751, when 
Dr. Samuel Johnson tells of * ' Mrs. Busy 
. . . married at eighteen from a board- 
ing-school, where she had passed her 
time like other young ladies, in needle- 
work, with a few intervals of dancing 
and reading. ' ' Schools like this at which 
**Mrs. Busy'* was bred, produced women 
of types depicted in Fanny Burney's 
'* Evelina,'' in Jane Porter's **Thad- 
deus of Warsaw," in Eegina Eoche's 
** Children of the Abbey" — women char- 
acters who complemented the desperate, 
cadaverous, mystery-fraught villains of 
the later Ann Radcliffe, precursor in the 
art of exciting narrative. 

No sketch of any subject discussed in 
the last half of the eighteenth century 
would be wholly human without witness- 
ing what the Leviathan of Literature 
declared. Just now we heard him telling 



152 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

of Mrs. Busy. Of the education of 
women Boswell reports him saying; 
'^^Some cunning men choose fools for 
their wives, thinking to manage them, 
but they always fail. . . . Depend upon 
it, no woman is the worse for sense and 
knowledge. . . . Men know that women 
are an overmatch for them, and therefore 
they choose the weakest or most igno- 
rant. If they did not think so, they 
never could be afraid of women knowing 
as much as themselves. " * * He told me, ' * 
solemnly adds Boswell, **he was serious 
in what he said. ' ' 

Elizabeth Carter, celebrated for her 
solid learning, possibly embodied the 
great Cham's estimate of what a woman 
might be. She ** could make a pudding 
as well as translate Epictetus," said the 
Doctor, *^and work a handkerchief as 
well as compose a poem.'* Two other 
women of that day we should also call 
back by mentioning — Elizabeth Griffith, 
playwright and novelist and editor of 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 153 

earlier women novelists, and Frances 
Brooke, ingenious and versatile writer of 
essays, novels and drama. 

While these women were at work, Dr. 
David Fordyce published, 1745, a * * Plan 
of Female Education.'^ Dr. Fordyce 
meant women's education — female at 
that being a not uncommon vulgarity for 
woman. Mary AstelPs ideas, you see, 
were still turning and forcing to expres- 
sion the thought of the time; *^It seems 
the fate of our weak sex to be always 
treated like children. You throw us 
fine toys and gewgaws, to amuse us, and 
when you see us taken with the shining 
trifles, you carry us off in triumph, and 
reduce us under the orders of domestic 
discipline. ' ' 

In this **Plan,'' the ideally educated 
woman was trained by a tutor and guard- 
ian, who allowed her ^^to go sometimes 
into his study, and look in his books, 
though he would have me very sober in 
the use of them," the ideal explained, 



154 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

*'for he thinks a woman in a very dan- 
gerous way who runs after the secrets 
of learning. ' ' This guardian was * * will- 
ing to gratify her curiosity, as long as 
she kept within due bounds.'' What 
*'due bounds'' in learning are no power, 
save papal, has ever yet had the temer- 
ity to define, though several have ven- 
tured, and unnumbered men and women 
have stood as sacrifices to the restric- 
tion. The ^^female education" of Dr. 
Fordyce's **Plan" was, it is plain, a 
considerable advance on what Chester- 
field and his mental, and sentimental, 
kindred had announced. 

About the.time Dr. Johnson was utter- 
ing the sententia we have quoted, John 
Bethune's ** Essay on Education" again 
reverted to old prejudices. Women 
**well deserve all the advantage that can 
be had from books, in the way of enter- 
tainment or improvements suited to 
them," wrote Mr. Bethune, as if he had 
communication with Omniscience and 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 155 

knew what were "suited to them/' "yet 
they have more powerful charms to 
recommend than those of letters'' — an 
echo, you see, of the sex-suggestion that 
distinguished Chesterfield in his writings 
quoted a few pages back, and a squint of 
Chesterfield's afflictive myopia; an evi- 
dence, too, how we humans pass on ideas, 
evil as well as good. "Though nothing 
is here said of the education of the ladies 
in particular," the author continues, 
"yet it is a very fit object of general at- 
tention, in itself, and in respect to its 
influence ... by their having almost 
sole charge of children in the beginning 
of life, and no small share of their edu- 
cation afterwards." Smug mediocrity 
essaying to speak of what it shows it- 
self too ignorant to measure ! — smug pre- 
tence expressing itself in platitudes and 
jejune English! To Mr. Bethune the 
education of one-half of the human race 
was "a very fit object of general atten- 
tion" because that half had sole charge 



156 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

of children and no small share of their 
after training. 

The education of women was now thor- 
oughly bespoken — in spite of John Be- 
thunes. Catherine Macaulay continued 
its advance when she petitioned, in 1790, 
in her ** Letters on Education *' against 
the ** degrading differences in the cul- 
ture of the understanding" of boys and 
girls — ^which **can only suit with the 
notion of a positive inferiority in the in- 
tellectual powers of the female mind." 
^* Confine not the education of your 
daughters to what is regarded as the 
ornamental parts of it," she begged, 
'^amusement' and instruction of boys 
and girls ought to be the same." And 
Mistress Macaulay 's sister-worker, 
Hannah More, declared, **I call educa- 
tion not that which smothers a woman 
with accomplishments, but that which 
tends to confirm a fine and regular sys- 
tem of character — that which tends to 
form a friend, a companion and a wife. 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 157 

I call education not that which is made 
up of the shreds and patches of useless 
arts, but that which inculcates prin- 
ciples, polishes taste, regulates temper, 
cultivates reason, subdues the passions, 
diverts the feelings, habituates to re- 
flection, trains to self-denial, and more 
especially that which refers all actions, 
feelings, sentiments, tastes and passions 
to common sense. ' ' 

These, then, were estimates modern 
centuries have recorded of the education 
of women; the sixteenth with its splen- 
dor of educated gentlewomen ; the seven- 
teenth with the early waning and final 
eclipse of such light ; the eighteenth start- 
ing out with endeavor, under Queen 
Anne, to put lately published plans of 
women's colleges into material expres- 
sion, in its unfolding years bringing to 
the world many contentions for and 
against the education of women, and 
finally in its French Revolution proclaim- 
ing the ** Rights of Man." Sequent of 



158 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

the ^^ Eights of Man''— the rights of 
women — the nineteenth was to embody in 
its democracy, in its application of long- 
standing ideas of education, and in its 
founding of women's colleges.^ 

1 Discourses upon the injustices of the narrow edu- 
cation of women found publication at times in our 
American, New England, papers of the colonial 
period, and pioneers in broader opportunities now 
and then founded a "Female Academy" — for instance, 
that of Miss Pierce in Litchfield, Connecticut, in 
1792 — after the country had again settled to civil 
life. But the general temper for fifty years after 
the Revolution speaks in the Johnsonian English of a 
letter to the Evening Post of New York: 

May 19, 1814. 
Mr. Editor, 

Having seen a public notice in your paper that 
the anniversary of the Philo Lexian Society was to 
be celebrated on Tuesday evening, my curiosity led 
me to the place ; nor was I ever more highly gratified. 
The speakers insf)ired by the charms of a numerous 
and brilliant female audience, and encouraged by the 
confidence which attention naturally creates, poured 
forth their sentiments in a style of truly animated 
eloquence. With respect to the Forensic, on the ques- 
tion, "Ought the benefits of a liberal education to be 
extended to the Female sex?'* we may safely affirm 
that a more suitable or more interesting subject 
could not have been chosen. It was argued with the 
greatest spirit and energy. Nor do we believe that 
the cause of the sex was often more justly or more 
ably defended, both as to strength of reasoning and 
beauty of language, than by its youthful advocate. 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 159 

Nearly one hundred years before the 
great cataclysm of the French Mary As- 
tell had sown the seed. That is the 
way an idea grows in the slow-moving, 
secular processes of the social mind, in 
the progress of the spirit of a people. 
First, there is the inception of the idea 
in hearts and minds peculiarly fertile 
for its seeding. The idea is produced, 
that is, by some conjunction of circum- 
stances peculiarly fitting for its forma- 
tion — in the mind of some one of capac- 
ity to generate ideas. Oftenest its 
proclamation to the world is simple — 
almost all greatness has Nazarene-like 
foundation ; ^ ^ God hath chosen the weak 
things of the world to confound the 
things which are mighty.'' Doctors of 
convention meet and press forward the 
old as the only rational practice, and 

The feeling and interest with which their cause 
was espoused by him, evidently shewed, as the re- 
spondent very justly remarked, that he too was in 
search of his lovely Lucilla. 

A Female Spectator. 



160 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

declare the new subversive of the very 
foundations of the social temple. Cheek 
by jowl with the idea walk negation and 
scoff. But scoffs die out, and after gen- 
erations the idea finds sturdy growth. 

This history happened in the evolu- 
tion of the collegiate education of 
women. I have here shown how the idea 
was set forth, how in measure it fared 
at the hands of the doctors, and we are 
now at the point where its success was 
assured. With Mary Astell the educa- 
tion of women as a distinct, formulated 
idea begins its progress. Let us turn 
back to her once more and see what con- 
temporaries said of her: 

A *^ great ornament of her sex and 
country,'* one called her. Another said 
she had **a piercing wit, a solid judg- 
ment, and a tenacious memory." She 
* * showed by her own example what great 
things and excellences her sex was 
capable of," declared another. The 
turbulent Dr. Atterbury, a chief grace 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 161 

of whose life was a singularly tender 
affection for his refined and highly edu- 
cated daughter ^ — Dr. Atterbury is re- 
ported praising Miss AstelPs ** sensible 
and rational way of writing." Her 
book, ** Reflections upon Marriage," pub- 
lished in 1700, a man of her time claims 
to have been written ** with a vast deal of 
wit and smartness," and to make per- 
haps * * the strongest defence that ever yet 
appeared in print of the rights and 
abilities of the fair sex. ' ' ^ The italics 

1 "My Dear Heart," he addressed her in his letters, 
"Tis impossible to express the tenderness and con- 
cern with which I think of you always," he once 
wrote to her. 

2 A short quotation from an appendix to the fourth 
edition of this book will give further evidence of 
Mary Astell's acute reasoning. In reading it we must 
bear in mind that she wrote in Queen Anne's time: 

" 'Tis true, through want of learning, and of that 
superior genius which men, as men, lay claim to, 
she [the author] was ignorant of the natural in- 
feriority of our sex, which our masters lay down as a 
self-evident and fundamental truth. She saw noth- 
ing in the reason of things, to make this either a 
principle or a conclusion, but much to the contrary; 
it being sedition at least, if not treason, to assert it 
in this reign. For if by the natural superiority of 
their sex, they mean, that every man is by nature su- 



162 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

are not ours; they are in the book of 
1752, 

Gossip of the day attributed her ** Re- 
flections" to **her disappointment in 
a marriage contract with an eminent 

perior to every woman, which is the obvious meaning, 
and that which must be stuck to if they would speak 
sense, it would be a sin in any woman to have do- 
minion over any man, and the greatest queen ought 
not to command but to obey, her footman: because 
no municipal laws can supersede or change the law 
of nature. So that if the dominion of the men be 
such, the Salique law, as unjust as English men have 
ever thought it, ought to take place over all the 
earth, and the most glorious reigns in the English, 
Danish, Castilian, and other annals, were wicked 
violations of the law of nature. 

"If they mean that some men are superior to 
some women, this is no great discovery; had they 
turned the tables they might have seen that some 
women are superior to some men. Or had they been 
pleased to remember their oaths of allegiance and 
supremacy, they might have known that One Woman 
is superior to all the men in these nations, or else 
they have sworn to little purpose. And it must not 
be supposed that their reason and religion would 
suflFer them to take oaths contrary to the law of 
nature and reason of things." . . . 

"That the custom of the world has put women, 
generally speaking, into a state of subjection, is not 
denied; but the right can no more be proved from 
the fact than the predominancy of vice can justify 
it." . . . 

"Again, if absolute sovereignty be not necessary 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 163 

clergyman. ' ' This may be true, or again 
it may be merely an instance of the 
inclination of the world to find in sex 

in a state, how comes it to be so in a family? Or if 
in a family, why not in a state; since no reason can 
be alleged for the one that will not hold more 
strongly for the other? If the authority of the 
husband, so far as it extends, is sacred and inalien- 
able, why not that of the prince? The domestic 
sovereign is without dispute elected, and the stipu- 
lations and contract are mutual; is it not then 
partial in men to the last degree, to contend for and 
practice that arbitrary dominion in their families 
which they abhor and exclaim against in the state? 
For if arbitrary power is evil in itself, and an im- 
proper method of governing rational and free agents, 
it ought not to be practised anywhere; nor is it less 
but rather more mischievous in families than in king- 
doms, by how much 100,000 tyrants are worse than 
one. What though a husband can not deprive a wife 
of life without being responsible to the law, he may, 
however, do what is much more grievous to a gen- 
erous mind, render life miserable, for which she has 
no redress, scarce pity, which is afforded to every 
other complainant, it being thought a wife's duty to 
suffer everything without complaint. If all men are 
born free, how is it that all women are born slaves? 
As they must be, if the being subjected to the in- 
constant, uncertain, unknown arbitrary will of men 
be the perfect condition of slavery." 

Miss Astell finally closes her book with a sentence 
referring to millennial days: "A tyrannous domi- 
nation, which nature never meant, shall no longer 
render useless, if not hurtful, the industry and un- 
derstandin^B of one half mankind." 



164 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

affairs cause for any action of any 
woman, and especially to find love disap- 
pointments for spinsters. Her ** Essay 
in Defence of the Female Sex,'' and 
**Tlie Christian Religion as Professed 
by a Daughter of the Church of Eng- 
land" caused more comment in her day 
than did the *^Eeflections." 

**Her notions and sentiments of re- 
ligion, piety, charity, humility, friend- 
ship and all other graces which adorn 
the good Christian were most refined 
and sublime," says a sketch of her life 
written shortly after she died. **And 
although from the very flower of her 
age she lived and conversed with the 
beau monde, amidst all the gaiety, pomp 
and pageantry of the great city ; yet she 
well knew how to resist and shun those 
infatuating snares, and wisely guarded 
against all these temptations and evils. ' ' 
. . . ** Though she was easy and affable 
to others," her younger contemporary 
continues, *'to herself she was some- 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 165 

times perhaps oversevere. In absti- 
nence few or none ever surpassed her, 
for she would live like a hermit, for a 
considerable time together upon a crust 
of bread and water. . . . She very 
rarely ate any dinner till night, and then 
it was by the strictest rules of temper- 
ance . . . and would frequently observe 
that those who indulged themselves in 
eating and drinking could not be so well 
disposed or prepared either for study 
or the regular and devout service of 
their Creator.'' 

What a brave, self-denying heart she 
was ! Have in mind the sensibilities that 
go with a generative imagination, and 
then think what she must have suffered 
in the insulting ridicule of the Dick 
Steeles, and the nullifying of her project 
by Bishop Burnets! She was faithful. 
**A person who has truth and justice on 
his side," she wrote, *' needs not be 
afraid to combat on, though she should 
be left to stand alone; for such an one 



166 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

does not stay to balance what's to be 
got or lost in tbis world, by an honest 
and generous action.'' 

What a propulsive her effort to start 
the first women's college more than two 
hundred years ago! Her act doubtless 
affected your life, our lives. If she had 
not set forth such ideas, fruition might 
not yet have come — for time, we re- 
peat, is essential to work ameliorat- 
ing changes. How her action urges us 
to speak out the truth we see ! 

Mary Astell knew that education is 
what another has finely called it a spirit- 
ual stimulation and solace, an inspira- 
tion to endure the inevitable ills of life, 
an anodyne when those ills prevail. 
She saw these advantages. She was 
generous and high-souled. She sought 
that others might have them. She knew 
that through education women would 
gain sense of real values. She knew 
that education would teach them to force 
back the factitious and artificial which 



TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 167 

are constantly striving to spring for- 
ward. She would make evident real 
things to be sought. 

Grouping of women for collegiate 
instruction is but one offshoot of that 
democratic process that has been going 
on for thousands of years — ^it is one of 
the ways the race has learned of giving 
to many privileges once reserved for a 
few. It has taken long. Centuries are 
mere hours in the social will. 



USES AND ABUSES OF TWO 

ENGLISH WORDS FEMALE, 

WOMAN 



{Valentine) — "I did not respect your intellect: 
I've a better one myself; it's a masculine specialty." 
"Yon Never Can Tell," 
George Beenaed Shaw. 

A man is seldom ashamed of feeling that he can 
not love a woman so well when he sees a certain 
greatness in her — ^nature having intended greatness 
for men. But nature has sometimes made sad over- 
sights in carrying out her intentions. 

"Middlemarch," Geoeqe Eliot. 

Nor should I complain of the intricacy of Greek 
abbreviations and Gothic alphabet, since every day, in 
a familiar language, I am at a loss to decypher the 
Hieroglyphics of a female note. 

"Autobiography," Edwaed Gibbon. 

All human power is a compound of time and 
patience. Powetful beings will and wait. ... In 
the life of the soul, as in the physical life, there is 
an inspiration and a respiration; the soul needs to 
absorb the sentiments of another soul and assim- 
ilate them. 

"Eugenie Grandet," Balzac. 



USES AND ABUSES OF TWO 

ENGLISH WORDS FEMALE, 

WOMAN 

WoKDs are winged, the old Greeks 
used to say. Even in our less imagina- 
tive vision we see them flying from soul 
to soul. And when their journeyings 
are protracted, when they fare through 
generations, how startling the changes 
of their meaning! How vastly their 
subtle shifting of color may affect hu- 
man life! Take, for instance, a single 
noun of our English speech, and ideas 
grouping round its singular and plural 
within these last one hundred years: 
woman; women. 

Why are the two possessives — 
woman's and women's — current and con- 
tending? Why, instead of saying, for 

171 



172 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

instance, Woman's Executive Board do 
many of us now choose to say Women's 
Executive Board? What endeavor to 
truth and refine some thought first led 
to the variation, and to its ten thousand 
repetitions! Bias of temperament can 
not explain it. Nor is one word easier 
to pronounce than the other. 

A hundred years ago, in America and 
in England, popular usage chose the 
singular, woman's. But since then has 
grown a differentiation. Lately, for 
example, ^^The Century Dictionary'* 
printed woman's, **The Encyclopaedia 
Britannica'' women's. Does the varia- 
tion indicate a psychical difference be- 
tween ourselves and our cousins over 
the sea? We think so. A history, a 
traceable and illuminative tale, lies be- 
hind this seemingly trivial difference of 
singular and plural, and helps make 
plain the history and characteristics of 
ourselves and our kin in England. Let 
us in broad lines sketch what happened. 



MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 173 

In early centuries in England, 
when the English language had become 
a formed and completed speech, a ver- 
nacular worth a translation of the Bible, 
the words women, a plural with woman 
for its singular, (already an amalgam of 
wif and man) described one-half of 
humanity. The English Bible which 
John Wycliffe and his fellow workmen, 
between the years 1360 and 1385, pre- 
pared for the reading of English-speak- 
ing people, gives no other than a normal 
and rational use of the two words from 
its second chapter of Genesis onward. 
This is evidence of what dignity the 
general usage must have been. But we 
have also another witness for that time 
in Greoifrey Chaucer and his Canterbury 
Tales — in his ever-famous characters 
and the words he puts in their mouths. 
They were woman and women, normally. 

In those days, you remember, convents 
were often richly endowed women's 
clubs, with doors standing open to 



174 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

women not inclined to marriage, to that 
percentage of women whose natures 
fitted them in no way for marital de- 
pendence — just as monasteries stood 
open for that percentage of men whose 
natures fitted ill to married life. The 
age was one of very considerable freedom 
for women. Convents also stood with 
open doors to women who, with inclina- 
tion for marriage, lacked husbands be- 
cause of the killing off of men, their death 
in unceasing wars and the accidents of 
civil life. Convents afforded a comfort- 
able home. Their religious ritual rarely 
overtaxed, on occasion, in fact, needed 
a minimum, of time and thought. 
Women members of those convent-clubs 
found leisure not only for travel but for 
sport. We could cite a number of in- 
stances. Here is one: — 

Of Dame Juliana Barnes, born about 
1388, prioress of Sopewell nunnery, long 
abode legends of learning, of her spirit, 
her beauty, her love of out-door pas- 



MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 175 

times, **with which she used frequently 
to recreate herself/^ says an old author, 
*'and she was so well skilled . . . that 
she wrote treatises of hawking, hunting, 
fishing ^ ... so well esteemed that they 
were printed and published in the very 
infancy of the art of printing.^' Let 
Prioress Juliana herself speak: ** In- 
somuch that gentill men, and honest 
persones," she wrote, *^have grete delite 
in haukyng, and desire to have the maner 
to take haukys. . . . Therefore thys 
book folowyng in a dew forme shewys 
veri knawlege of such plesure to gentill 
men, and parsonys disposed to se itt." 
Sopewell nunnery, we may add, had been 
founded in 1140 by two devout women 
who are said to have ** raddled boughs 
of trees with wattles and stakes" for a 
covering and to have passed their time 
in acts of devotion and abstinence. The 
usual history of such foundations fol- 

1 Ruins of the nunnery still stand about twenty 
miles northwest of London, near St. Albans and the 
Ver, a little river yet famous for its trout. 



176 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

lowed. Eelaxation of strict rules and 
subordination of spiritual inspiration to 
physical comfort, had taken place before 
the mettled Juliana came to its headship. 

In those days common usage called a 
woman, a woman, and women, women. 
Such cases continued for years after — 
for instance, in the marvellously racy 
and delightful translation into English 
of ** Chronicles of Froissarf made by 
Lord Bemers *'at the comaundement of 
oure moost highe redoubted souerayne 
lorde kyng Henry viii,'' and finished in 
the year 1531-32. 

Ten years later than this, 1542, in a 
virulent satire against women — a satire 
so licentious as well as virulent that it 
is to-day impossible of reading except 
to the student of history — in **The 
Schole Howse for Women," popular to 
the degree that three printers had 
license for its production, the words 
woman and women appeared in normal 
use. The author, Edward Gosynhyll, 



MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 177 

valiantly suppressed Ms name, but it 
came out afterwards wHen he published 
*^Mulierum Pean'' in amends for his 
gross attack. And in a ** Defence of 
Women,'' 1560, by a poor scholar at 
Oxford, Edward More, woman and 
women are rightly used, with perhaps an 
occasional femynye. 

Attacks upon women in these years 
were, however, outdone when, in 1558,^ 
the fiery spirit of John Knox blew **The 
First Blast of the Trumpet against the 
Monstrous Eegiment of Women." In 
the view of certain leaders of the Great 
Eeformation, domestic life and domestic 
duties were the sole outlook for women. 
That principles evolved in women's lives 
were necessary, constructive factors in 
a community's upbuilding and upkeep- 
ing, did not weigh in the calculations of 
many then eminent in church and state. 

1 This year is notable as that in which one queen 
of England, Mary, died, and another, Elizabeth, 
came to the throne. These facts doubtless stirred 
misogynists of the day. 



178 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

To their view the spirit of Puritanism 
was engaged with affairs accorded to 
men's side of life. Puritan reaction 
from nunneries carried with seeming 
freedom a severity of discipline for 
women — for those who would lead a 
single life expressing women's devotion 
to their community by substantial, dig- 
nified works; a severity, too, for those 
who married, depriving them of centres 
of women's works, counsels one with an- 
other, and general club associations. 
No longer could women solace them- 
selves even with the busy needles, the 
drawings, the writings, nunneries had 
afforded ajid their community-group- 
ings fostered.^ 

1 This cutting-off had profound results through 
many generations — domestic duties and life alone 
opened to women; marriage held their only possibil- 
ities for human work. Feeling was general that 
when women did not marry their life must be 
wholly barren. Because of the decimation of men 
by war and adventure, we say, unmarried women 
were cut off from active, constructive life and most 
often came to be held as a sort of ineffective, upper- 
servant, unpaid, unthanked, in the house of a mar- 
ried sister, brother or friend. 



MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 179 

But however much ^*soiir John Knox" 
wanted to instruct and confirm English 
and Scottish peoples in the oriental 
stand toward women — and he had a 
measure of success — still his shrieking, 
feverish hysteria cleanly kept to the 
descriptive word than in general use. 
A lovely voice, that of John Aylmer, 
which sounded in answer to Knox, also 
used women. ** Happening not long 
agone,'' said Aylmer, *'to rede a lytle 
Book straungely written by a straunger, 
to prove that the rule of Women is out 
of Eule, and not in a Common Welth 
toUerable; and waying at the first what 
harme might come of it, and feling at 
the last, that it hath not a lytle wounded 
the Conscience of some symple, and al- 
most cracked the Dutie of true Obedi- 
ence, I thought it more then necessary 
to lay before Mens Eyes the Untruth of 
the Argument, the Wekeness of the 
Proufes, and the Absurditie of the 
whole." 



180 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

In that sobriety — of woman and 
women — our English tongue stood about 
the middle of the sixteenth century. If 
the word woman's meaning women's 
and especially if female meaning solely 
a woman, had been current among the 
well-bred of Knox^s day, you may be 
sure he would have used it — so pro- 
nounced was his contempt toward 
women, even toward those gentle crea- 
tures upon whose generous self-efface- 
ment his life-work and fame were built. 

Later than Knox, say by half a cen- 
tury, in 1590, Edmund Spenser, dedicat- 
ing in the abject phrase of the time, his 
** Faerie Queene'' to Elizabeth **Queene 
of England, Fraunce and Ireland and of 
Virginia," declares of women *4n the 
common'': 

*'Vertuous women wisely understand, 
That they were borne to base humilitie, 
Unlesse the heavens them lift to lawfuU sover- 
aintie.'' 

And Shakespeare, in ** Love's Lab- 



MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 181 

our's Lost," 1594, refers to *^a child 
of our grandmother Eve, a female; or 
for thy more sweet understanding, a 
woman." Touchstone's quirk told the 
usage exactly — *Hhis female, which in 
the common is — woman." 

Thus things stood toward the end of 
the sixteenth century. The version of 
the Bible called **King James," pub- 
lished in 1611, conserving simple dignity, 
race purity of speech and the marvellous 
distinction of our mother tongue — this 
** authorized version" kept up the natu- 
ral and legitimate woman and women 
through stories of Eve; of Rebecca 
and Miriam; of the daughters of Zelo- 
phehad, who, you remember, brought up 
the question of their right to inheritance ; 
of Deborah, a chief judge of Israel; of 
that nameless sage, wife of Manoah and 
mother of Samson, and her statement of 
trust in the Almighty — still onward 
through the sweet idyll of Euth and the 
drama of Esther to **a woman of Sa- 



182 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

maria'' and so to the end. It was 
woman, women. 

When King James' Bible came to the 
people's hands and strengthened their 
hearts, and began doing what the Great 
Book has ever done in such intimacies 
— stir the human spirit to democracy — 
many ancestors of ours entered west- 
bound ships and left Europe bearing the 
Bible's precepts in their hearts and its 
printed pages in their hands as their 
most precious possession. 

But behind their bellying sails, in the 
old English home, an order hostile to 
democratic ideals was growing. **Now 
make us a king to judge us like all the 
nations" a fraction of the people clam- 
ored. And finally Charles II ascended 
the English throne. 

Yet, even after the recall of the 
Stuarts, we find clean, pure and right 
use of words referring to women. 
Take, for instance, a sentence from that 
uncouth, rich-minded bachelor, Anthony 



MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 183 

a Wood of Oxford, when about 1670 he 
wrote, *^Dr. Bathurst took his Place of 
Vice-Chancellor, a man of Good Parts, 
and able to do good Things, but he has 
a Wife that scorns that he should be in 
print; a Scornful Woman, scorns that 
he was Dean of Wells ; no need of marry- 
ing such a Woman, who is so conceited 
that she thinks herself fit to govern a 
College or University." 

But, generally speaking, following the 
establishment of Charles II a barbarism 
settled over England. The people were 
as Milton then described himself, . . . 
**f alien on evil days, 

On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues ; 
In darkness, and with dangers compassed 
round. ' ' 

The court took color from the brazen 
vulgarities of such creatures as the 
Duchess of Cleveland in concerted action 
with the king, and temperature from the 
mercenary rakes of both sexes. The 



184 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

disease spread through English life and 
degenerated English folk. English liter- 
ature, especially the literature of the 
stage, shown mainly with one light — 
phosphorescent decay. English ver- 
nacular reflected social conditions. Eng- 
lish men, and even men of the finest 
cultivation of their time, wrote them- 
selves down speaking of mother and wife 
and other women as females. In their 
use, you see, the noun did not refer selec- 
tively to a hen or a cow or a mare. It 
referred solely to a female of the human 
species. Indeed, in that day, females 
was a mild appellative for women.^ A 
subdued elegance is about the noun when 
you compare it with the nauseating 

"i^ Female was also wit according to Dryden's defi- 
nition of vnt: "Thoughts and Words elegantly 
adapted to the Subject" — ^the famous icit which 
coursed, often viciously, through generations of Eng- 
lish life; — beginning, according to Sir William Tem- 
ple, "with that part of Conversation which was for- 
merly left to those called Fools, and were used in 
great families only to make the Company laugh/' it 
finally lost its mordant vitality only before the pro- 
founder, humaner, democratic spirit of the nine- 
teenth century. 



MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 185 

speech with which, for instance, her 
Grace of Cleveland hailed the author of 
**The Country Wife'' in Pall Mall, or 
with the language of the plays of the 
time. At least it did not qualify sex 
conditions, even if it openly reiterated 
the fact of sex as the sole basis of human 
association. 

To the men of those generations, and 
— since it has long been the habit of 
women with minds benumbed by their 
state of tutelage oftenest to accept men's 
habit of mind — also to the women of that 
day the noun female connoted a woman, 
females, women. Women, or to use that 
day's vernacular, females, it was com- 
monly thought were those creatures fitted 
almost solely for reproduction of the 
species — their interests necessarily ovar- 
ian, or allied to the ovarian — and, by 
an equally sturdy logic, a God-made, 
human thing for the toying of men in 
their good-natured moments, or the butt 
of their buUyings in their bad. Men of 



186 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

the time substantially said this. One, 
for instance, echoed it when he laid out 
what he called a ** Female Province," 
which, he magnificently declared, is 
** whatever has not been particularly as- 
signed by Nature to ' ' men ; whose prov- 
ince, he proclaimed, '4s universal, and 
comprehends everything from the culture 
of the earth to the government of it." 

Nature debarred women, according to 
these men, from all but reproduction, 
and lending to their amusement and 
pleasure — and doing a large part of the 
world's drudgery. Companioning the 
usage of female in those years a man 
was not called a male, men, males. It 
was about women, as if sex were their 
one distinctive characteristic and de- 
scriptive, that the parlance fell — first 
rising probably among red-blooded coun- 
try folk where the word referred to 
stocky breeders of the child; and after- 
wards passing to men of fashion and 
furthers of mode whose pursuit of women 



MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 187 

was their one interest, ambition and 
work in life.^ A phase often in their 
mouths, **the sex,'' meaning women, 
told the true story of their thought and 
deed. 

**The sex,'' female, was an envelope, 
an artificiality, a supposition, in which a 
human being was concealed. The word 
carried such import as to render women 
painfully self-conscious. Eesults were 
that females minced their movements, 
cultivated almost inconceivable falsities 
in manner and morals, fainted or wept 
** floods" on all occasions but that of con- 
ventional compliment — weakness was 
supposed to be a charm of the female 
of the human species. They were beau- 
teous — with cosmetics ; elegant — ^with 
iron or board corsets; exquisite — ^with 

1 By an atavism, possibly, survivals of the thinking 
persist to-day. For example, a distinguished acad- 
emician not long ago wrote of the word female's 
use: "It struck men as somehow being more appro- 
priate." Precisely — struck men of the Stuart day. 
That is the crux of the whole matter, even when it 
so strikes atavistic survivors to-day. 



188 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

cloying perfumes and ostentatious orna- 
ment; weak — from lack of rational food 
and clothing and healthful out-door exer- 
cise — **what is but going in men being 
accounted gadding in maids,'' wrote that 
unprejudiced worthy, Thomas Fuller; 
and oftenest they were ignorant of even 
their mother tongue. The very phrase 
by which they were named expected them 
to be that — females — a thing in which 
sex alone made appeal. You see what 
falsity — a falsity old Ben Jonson would 
have called * ' un-in-one-breath-utterable ' ' 
— the word connoted. 

And the women lived up to it, we re- 
peat. They most often do live up to 
what the world puts upon them. **Doch 
grosse Seelen dulden still," wrote Schil- 
ler. **In der Beschrankung," said an- 
other, Goethe, **zeigt sich erst der 
Meister" — in his limitation the master 
first shows himself. English books, for 
instance the wonderful pictures of man- 



MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 189 

ners in **Tom Jones,'' witness this. 

To think rules to act. Man's conduct 
is organically connected with his think- 
ing. Changes in meaning of words are 
index of spiritual changes of a people. 
Our ancestors thought differently, and 
in their characteristic English way said 
what they thought — differently. Thus 
their saying's significance. The word 
females expressed the then conception. 
But certain men among them escaped the 
infection. In these the imagination of 
our race abode and its inborn idealism 
gleamed forth. The chaste Puritanism 
of Milton's poems carries the rational 
and legitimate word, woman. But once, 
in ** Samson Agonistes," does female 
appear other than normally, and then 
the word means wife. Later on Defoe, 
with his plea for the education of women, 
and the radical Nonconformists gen- 
erally were real precursors of the future. 

Female was the estimate of women by 



190 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

men of that Stuart day obsessed by sex, 
their world unnaturally saturated with 
sexuality. Abuse of the word, and of 
the women, went on, in spite of attempts 
at purifying the social atmosphere, when 
the cleaner part of the people drove the 
Stuarts from the throne — ^went on, that 
is, during the reign of William and Mary 
of Orange. Still, even the undoubtedly 
first agitator for the founding of 
women's colleges, that protagonist of 
women's rights, probably by the bye first 
user of the phrase ** women's rights," 
Mary Astell, in 1696, entitled one of her 
books ** Essays in Defence of the Female 
Sex" — doubtless because her ears heard 
little else. 

Female persisted during much of the 
next century, the eighteenth, for Queen 
Anne's courtiers had reacted to its use. 
The rake-writers of her reign breathed 
its atmosphere when they were boys, and 
alas! absorbed the spirit it bore, and 
down went the word in their Tatlers and 



MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 191 

Spectators — periodicals destined later 
to bear the force of classics.^ 

The vulgarity, often unconscious, 
crystallizing in language the estimate of 
one-half of the people by the other half, 
prevailed in early American writing as 
well as in British. It was a possession, 
you see, of English-speaking peoples. 

The word ran a course in England of 
two hundred years. You find it even in 
such writers of the nineteenth century 
as Charles Lamb, for instance in his 
essay on ^* Modern Gallantry" — of all 
places! Also in Scott, in Jane Austen, 
Borrow, Dickens, Thackeray and George 
Eliot, writers tuned to certain linguistic 
traditions of the eighteenth. Its use 
persists still later in Stevenson and other 

1 Yet in those days the Scottish "Gentle Shepherd," 
Allan Ramsay, wrote woman: 

"It shaws a spirit low an' common, 
That wi' ill-nature treats a woman: 
They're of a mak sae nice an' fair. 
They must be manag'd wi' some care; 
Respect them, they'll be kind and civil, 
But disregarded, prove the devil." 



192 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

late Victorians. Smut is hard to rub 
off even of a white mind. '* Men's judg- 
ments are a parcel of tlieir fortunes.'' 

These, then, are the changes of the 
centuries: — First, in our early English 
times, broadly, easily, sincerely, and in 
accord with other uses of the language, 
woman, women. Then, because of wide- 
spread spiritual disease of the seven- 
teenth century, coarsely, as if women 
were sex beings alone, female, females. 

But again a change worked out. In 
early decades of the nineteenth century, 
when the idea of amelioration of 
women's condition had considerable im- 
petus towa|*d realization, English and 
Americans alike, when speaking of one- 
half of humans, spoke of woman. No 
longer was it **the sex," females, but a 
reaction from the physical, to a sort of 
philosophic abstraction, woman. Let us 
take up this last usage and see how it 
became current and what its currency 
implied. Let us see, too, what the out- 



MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 193 

look is for ourselves and the future. 

The English of to-day concrete their 
mental operations. Originally the 
Yankee was an Englishman. But he 
sailed from England in pursuit of an 
idea — at a time when the English more 
commonly than now dealt in abstrac- 
tions. Upon these western, American 
shores he lived under a dominating idea, 
and stamped upon others the spirit that 
living of his created. 

Through generations this American 
drank abstractions with his mother-milk. 
His old-time catechism stretched his 
child-mind to as near approach to the 
abstract as pitiless elders have ever 
planned. His child- verse — to learn by 
heart — both within his catechism and 
without, was often abstract. His chief 
theme, theology, was abstract. Theo- 
crats, his clergy, whom he enlisted to 
direct his course in this world, and highly 
problematic fate in the world to come, 
taught in abstract terms duties to ab- 



194 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

stractions more often than plainly- 
spoken duties to concrete humanity. 
Now and then only, in the grip of his 
spiritual directors upon his personal 
affairs, did he realize how concrete life 
might be. And at last, after genera- 
tions of such tensely drawn life, his 
simple, other-worldly spirit — ^like the 
spire of his meeting-house piercing a 
pure and fine aether — ^his simple, uplifted 
enthusiasm fought at last, in our great 
Eevolution, for the mighty abstraction, 
democracy — to which he gave the best 
material expression possible to his day. 

**His other-worldly spirit," we say, 
''his uplifted enthusiasm," **he fought." 
No such action, and no such possession, 
would have been possible to the man- 
half of that world alone. Another half 
equally aspired and equally labored. 
Women throughout his land did heroic 
work in their common cause — at the 
spinning-wheel and loom, making into 



MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 195 

clothing what they had spun and woven, 
laboring in field and stables and 
dairy for food to reinvigorate the army. 
They, too, faced defeat and death, often- 
est in solitude and without the cheer and 
inspiration of comrade enthusiasts. 

Their blood-bought victory, the estab- 
lishment of popular rights upon Amer- 
ican soil, this people, men and women, 
finally, in 1782, won. After a few years 
the French developed their Eevolution. 
During that terrible welter of orders, 
our American forebears showed their 
hearty faith in democracy by stretching 
over the sea hands of fellowship to the 
bourgeoisie fighting for '*the Eights 
of Man.'' '*The Eights of Man" pro- 
clamation was the French sequent to 
our Declaration of the Fourth of July, 
1776. 

Now, in human society, the inevitable 
corollary of *Hhe Eights of Man" would 
be ''the Eights of Woman." The 



196 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

thought must come, the phrase must 
arise. For in France, also, women did 
great deeds toward the highest issues of 
the nation's tragedy. 

Living for a time among the strug- 
gling French was an Irish-English 
woman whom we know as Mary WoU- 
stonecraf t. Gifted with fervor and inde- 
pendence, Mary wrote a book, ** A Vindi- 
cation of the Eights of Women. " It was 
published in 1792, and doubtless owed its 
existence at that moment to the author's 
sympathies with the people of France — 
sympathy with their struggle for **the 
Eights of Man" — ^the word man in their 
usage largely subsuming woman. The 
very dedication of the book was to a 
Frenchman — not to the memory of the 
great English heart of Mary Astell, 
which, one hundred years before had 
prompted the faith and work of a 
prophet in a wilderness of ridicule and 
prejudice — ^not to Mary Astell, but to the 
monstrous Talleyrand over whose facti- 



MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 197 

tious morality the lady's Irish suscepti- 
bilities had for the moment warmed. 

Mary WoUstoneeraft's book, her 
** Vindication of the Eights of Woman,'' 
much read and much talked-of both at 
the time it appeared and later, had far- 
reaching influences upon English-speak- 
ing advocates of broader interests for 
women.^ The ' * Eights of Woman ' ' part 
of the title appealed to an American 
public still vigorously retentive of the 
abstract right of our American Eevolu- 
tion. Especially the title appealed to 
such of our folk as felt the injustice 
of our states' laws toward American 
women. They inscribed the phrase upon 

1 It undoubtedly influenced, for instance, our Phil- 
adelphia novelist, Charles Brockden Brown, in his 
dialogue upon our country-women's social and polit- 
ical status, "Alcuin," published in New York in 1798 
— a little book most clever and in argument aston- 
ishingly like brochures of a hundred years later. 
Brown talks of women quite as often a^ of females. 
Nevertheless he testifies to the seemingly indelible 
stain of the old-time word: "All intercourse between 
them [men and women] is fettered and embarrassed. 
On one side, all is reserve and artifice. On tho 
other, adulation and affected humility." 



198 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

their banners. Under its caption a 
women's party gradually formed. 

All this happened in the first half of 
the nineteenth century, we said, when 
foreworkers of the women's party were 
coming into the world. Susan B. An- 
thony, than whom it would be difficult to 
find a purer idealist, was a little girl 
when the first of our states to act in the 
reforms, undertook laws enlarging the 
liberties of women — that married women 
should own their own property, should 
be legally able to make a will, carry on 
a business,^ etc. These were also the 
early years of Abby Kelly Foster, Lucy 

1 A first removal of restriction was in 1821, when 
the legislature of Maine authorized a wife deserted 
by her husband to sue, make contracts, and convey 
real estate as if unmarried. A like law obtained 
shortly after in Massachusetts. Another concession 
was enacted the 15th of February, 1839, so far away 
from the first as Mississippi, and in December, 1846, 
in Arkansas, to the effect that "any married woman 
may become seised or possessed of any property, real 
or personal, by direct bequest, demise, gift, purchase, 
or distribution, in her own name and as if her own 
property: provided, the same does not come from 
her husband after coverture." 



MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 199 

Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and other 
protagonists of the women's party. 

Tradition of abstractions, love of ab- 
stractions, was, we say, among our nine- 
teenth century agitators — it was with 
Miss Anthony, for instance, whose men- 
tal grasp was almost invariably through 
an abstract term even in affairs of every- 
day life. What so natural that the 
reformers should continue a phrase al- 
ready current from Mary Wollstone- 
craft's book, and say Woman's Rights? 

These foreworkers for ^^ woman'' may 
have been conscious that to abstract 
would serve to veil the unusualness, the 
startling innovation of their demands — 
the demand, for example, that the real 
estate of the wife should not become 
liable for the husband's debts. To 
timid, unsympathetic, convention-ridden 
minds the abstract noun would put more 
remotely conditions for which the zealous 
labored. *^ Woman" was very general 
when it talked of that abstraction's 



200 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

** Rights." *^ Woman'' did not point a 
finger at a very common concrete being, 
the unwaged cook, washer, ironer and 
cleaner who spent her week-days in labor 
at her husband's house and rested in his 
church pew of a Sabbath. The abstract, 
you see, could not readily offend conserv- 
atives who talked about ** protected 
woman-folks.'' Hearers might not be 
alienated at the outset. 

In that day it was not unusual for a 
coterie, indeed at times a whole com- 
munity, to ridicule or sneer at women 
who lived any other life than what their 
critics defined their ** proper sphere." 
Think of the egotism, the assumption and 
prejudice which would fix limitations 
for one-half of humanity! Toward all 
women a man by custom might, nay! 
sometimes did (sometimes does?) prac- 
tise an overbearing temper founded on 
the superiority he assumed when he de- 
fined ** sphere" limitations. We still 
have records of women, of certain, for in- 



MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 201 

stance, of the New England stock, whom 
God had endowed with some great gift, 
some preponderant ability, in one in- 
stance the mathematical — ^women whose 
genius relentlessly drove them to its 
exercise, endeavoring to conceal all 
traces of the inflow of their heaven-sent 
strength by locking themselves and their 
work off from others' view and knowl- 
edge, in order, as they confessed, to 
escape the contempt which their every- 
day associates poured upon them for 
''overstepping female modesty." 

The word woman used as a descriptive 
of one-half of the race made its way 
through our country, helped, perhaps, 
by a reactive horror and disgust at 
female, females. Woman suffrage, 
woman's rights became current and the 
words still stand to-day in substantial 
organizations of the women's party. 
Some Englishman, probably John Stuart 
Mill but it is not at hand exactly to say, 
spoke of disabilities inherent in our use 



202 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

of the abstract term when he said that 
the reason the women's party had, in 
his day, made less progress in the United 
States than in England, was owing to 
the abstracting of the human being for 
whom the party sought amelioration, 
and the use of the abstract descriptive 
upon the party's banners. 

Now, upon the English mind, also, the 
French Revolution, its ideas especially in 
Mary Wollstonecraft's book, left the con- 
viction that the social status of womeiL 
must change. No Englishman was 
more profoundly affected and exalted by 
the radical ideas of the French Revolu- 
tion — their, stirring the human spirit 
to all-conquering reform — than Percy 
Bysshe Shelley. Shelley had a genius 
peculiarly sensitive to the humane ideas 
cast abroad by the American and French 
Revolts. He became their spokesman. 
And the romantic movement of his time 
— the rehabilitation of nature in human 
life, the re-identification of nature and 



MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 203 

reason — underlay his work. His ad- 
miration for the causes of Mary WoU- 
stonecraft, whose daughter became his 
second wife, was of real loyalty.^ 

In Shelley's aerial verse we find the 
attitude toward women that is in Mary's 
** Vindication of the Eights of Woman." 
Moreover, we invariably find the philo- 
sophic form, woman. In intense expres- 
sion Shelley in **The Revolt of Islam'* 
exclaims : 

**Can man be free if woman be a slave T' 
^* Woman as the bond-slave dwells 

Of man, a slave; and life is poisoned at its 
wells." 

** Woman ! — ^she is his slave, she has become 

A thing I weep to speak.*' 
**Well ye know 

What Woman is, for none of Woman born 

1 "They say that thou wert lovely from thy birth. 
Of glorious parents thou aspiring Child : 
I wonder not — for One then left this earth 
Whose life was like a setting planet mild, 
Which clothed thee in the radiance undefiled 
Of its departing glory. Still her fame 
Shines on thee, through the tempests dark and wild 
Which shake these latter days." 



204 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

Can choose but drain the bitter dregs of woe 
Which ever from the oppressed to the oppres- 
sor flow/' 

''The Revolt of Islam" Shelley wrote 
in the year 1817. Thirty years after 
this Alfred Tennyson was composing 
'^The Princess." It may be worth not- 
ing here that Tennyson was then a 
bachelor, although *^ quasi-betrothed" to 
Emily Sellwood whom he married long 
after. **The Princess" is a poeni-ex- 
pressing conservatively the larger view 
of women that moved the British mind 
during the years of its composition — 
the larger view which, was impelling 
Parliament* to enactments granting 
women greater: liberties. Laws which 
now seem to us the barest justice con- 
servatives opposed the introduction of — 
opposed with an ardor and strength of 
prejudices thousands of years old, de- 
bated at white heat, and at last suffered 
the passing in the fifth decade of the 
nineteenth century. Undoubtedly these 



MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 205 

parliamentary activities, daily news- 
paper reports, public discussion, and 
such modest books as ' * Can Woman Ee- 
generate Society!'' '* Woman's Mis- 
sion,'' '^Woman's Eights and Duties," 
published in London in 1844, incited 
Tennyson to picture his feudal ** Prin- 
cess." Woman stood for women in his 
poem, and also in these less-read books 
we name. 

So, also, woman stood in an article by 
George Eliot in *^The Westminster Ee- 
view," when she said, *^The man who 
would deny to woman the cultivation of 
her intellect, ought, for consistency, to 
shut her up in a harem. If he recognize 
in the sex any quality which transcends 
the qualities demanded in a plaything or 
handmaid — if he recognize in her the 
existence of an intellectual life not essen- 
tially dissimilar to his own, he must, by 
the plainest logic, admit that life to 
express itself in all its spontaneous 
forms of activity." 



206 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

Tennyson ^s ** Princess'' was published 
in 1847. George Eliot's article in 1852. 
Between those dates and 1869, the year 
of the publication of John Stuart Mill's 
** Subjection of Women," we find the 
word women superseding woman as a 
descriptive. How had the change come 
about? Undoubtedly through the Eng- 
lish people's feeling for the uses of 
expediency, through emphasis in their 
reforms of the value of the concrete. 
Especially, as we said, long debates in 
Parliament about acts affecting women's 
legal status had educated the people's 
ear to the plural form. Mill, himself, 
had strong sense of values of the con- 
crete — his invention and use of the word 
utilitarianism goes to show that. He 
emphasized such values under the leader- 
ship, he said, of his wife.^ 

1 "The steps in my mental growth for which I was 
indebted to her," says Mill in his "Autobiography," 
"were far from being those which a person wholly 
uninformed on the subject would probably suspect. 
It might be supposed, for instance, that my strong 



MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 207 

Since MilPs ^'Subjection of Women'' 
came before the world, the word woman, 
implying an abstract, has almost disap- 
peared from English use. In this 
country, however, a rather broad read- 
ing of MilPs book, and even the founda- 
tion of colleges, such as Vassar, Smith, 
Bryn Mawr, for women — ^not for fe- 
males, not for woman — seem to have 
made little against the popularity of the 
word. People continued it, woman. 
They still do, in printed page, in pulpit, 
on platform. 

And when the churches of our country 
awoke to recognition of the most sub- 
convictions on the complete equality in all legal, po- 
litical, social and domestic relations, which ought to 
exist between men and women, may have been adopted 
from her. . . . What is true is, that until I knew 
her, the opinion was in my mind, little more than an 
abstract principle. . . . That perception of the vast 
practical bearings of women's disabilities which 
found expression in the book on the 'Subjection of 
Women' was acquired mainly through her. . . . 
What was abstract and purely scientific was gen- 
erally mine; the properly human element came from 
her. . . . Her mind invested all ideas in a concrete 
shape, and formed itself a conception of how they 
would actually work." 



208 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

stantial factors furthering their work, 
the word bequeathed by the French 
Eevolution, using which Mary WoU- 
stonecraft had followed radical, eight- 
eenth-century, so-called atheistic philos- 
ophers, stood at hand. With woman 
the churches commonly connoted their 
women's organizations. Therefore, to- 
day we meet such phrases as Woman's 
Executive Board, TFoma^'^^uxiliary, 
in church affairs. Many another wo- 
men's association also is dubbed with 
the old abstract woman, whose members 
are unconscious of the source of the 
term and the irony of history they em- 
body in its use. Perhaps, when we think 
of the conventional prepossessions and 
prejudices of many women, of their love 
of class distinctions and caste barriers, 
their ignorance favors their comfort. 
At the time churches and other organi- 
zations of our country began to utilize 
women's energies and efficiency, we re- 
peat, the abstract noun was the only half- 



MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 209 

way just and modest descriptive current. 
Ladies, emphasizing caste distinction, 
discordant with the democracy of Chris- 
tianity, is manifestly ill-fitted for a 
church association. The word, woman, 
little more than a hundred years ago 
dyed with the fierce red of French radi- 
calism, is now in most conservative 
company. 

The concreting of the idea among us 
in these times — the use of women instead 
of woman — ^is due to a greater growth 
in women's sympathies and women's 
knowledge, to the evolving recognition 
of the comradeship of women and men. 
A broader democracy, a socializing of 
mind and heart, is spreading round the 
earth. That is, women are becoming 
conscious of the unity of humanity, and 
of themselves as a tremendous factor in 
that unity. 

This consciousness is a portentous 
mental and moral stimulation which, we 
say, women have heretofore lacked. 



210 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

Their secluded, solitary, little educated, 
often idealess, grossly subjective lives — 
lives, too, not infrequently subdued, year 
in and year out, by the toxin of fatigue 
from household routine; lives subdued, 
also by the poison of ridicule if they 
reached out after broader interests — 
such lives the spirit of our times is 
penetrating. It can penetrate women. 
It can not penetrate the abstract woman. 
Sentiment of unity, we repeat, of the 
solidarity of poor and rich, ignorant and 
wise, weak and strong, is abroad now as 
a lively stimulus and contagion, and 
coupled with its logical result, the con- 
viction of , the right of the individual to 
development, the right for "that life to 
express itself in all its spontaneous 
forms of activity." Such an outlook 
women have not heretofore actively 
realized. The woman of a life so nar- 
row, so restricted, so emotionally equable 
and subjective that she can not compre- 
hend or sympathize with others' lives 



MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 211 

replete with vicissitude, is disappearing. 
Not often now-a-days is a woman's ac- 
tivity bounded by 

*Hhe sugar and the tea, 
The flannels and the soap, the coals, 
The patent recipes for saving souls. 
And other things: the chill dread sneer 
Conventional, the abject fear 
Of form-transgressing freedom/' 

Over our country at large women are 
dropping the abstract term belonging 
to days when ignorance and prejudice 
were proclaiming an abstract ^* sphere'' 
and ironcast bounds for the human life 
back of that figment, and are now seek- 
ing to enroll themselves under women, 
a word which implies that they are 
thinking, active, human beings, with 
human sympathies ; that they, with their 
brothers, men, are co-learners of human 
life, and, with their brothers, men, are 
co-workers for human welfare in the 
great vineyard of the earth; that they, 
women, have intelligent interest in and 



212 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

are identified with the progress of their 
human kind in spite of old desires and 
misjudgments that sought to exclude 
them — that they are one-half of human- 
ity. 

One-half of humanity women have been 
since our remotest beginnings. But, 
through the pain of centuries and mil- 
lenia, in what halting and reversionary 
fashion ! They could not, whatever their 
effort, grasp the best, for man-made 
laws of church and state taught them to 
make themselves after what ignorance 
of their needs and prejudices against 
human liberty prescribed. 

Female .signifying a woman is a vul- 
garity happily passed. The abstract 
term woman which Mary WoUstone- 
craft and our American foreparents 
adopted from French radicals had 
mighty uses. It served as a rallying 
cry for vast good. But at this hour, 
now that women as a body are coming to 
consciousness of their lives, their work, 



MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 213 

its values, to recognition of its dignity 
at home and abroad, the word women, 
connoting a body, is the trne and legiti- 
mate expression of the sympathy and 
spirit of our times. 



PLATO'S IMPERISHABLE EPL 

GRAM: AND ITS TRAIL 

OF LIGHT 



It is the empty things that are vast: things solid 
are most contracted and lie in little room. 

"Preface to 'Novum Organum/ " 
Francis Bacon. 

Whoever Converses much among the Old Books 
will be some-hard to please among the New. 

Books, like Proverbs, receive their Chief Value 
from the Stamp and Esteem of Ages through which 
they have passed. 

"Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning," 

Sib William Temple. 

What is an epigram? a dwarfish whole, 
Its body brevity, and wit its soul.i 

"Poetical Register for 1802," 
(Quoted by Heney Philip Dodd.) 

1 A transformation from the Greek idea of the 
epigram! Satire gradually crept in the verse's spirit 
until, for insfance, with our English Pope and his 
fellows, it became what this line tells. 



PLATO'S IMPERISHABLE EPI- 
GRAM: AND ITS TRAIL 
OF LIGHT 

Aore/aas €Laadpu<s acTTqp efxo^' eWe yevoifjirjv 
Ovpav6<Sf w<s TToAAois ofjifxaaiv €ts ere jSAeVw. 

Thou gazest on the stars ! 
Would I might be, 
O star of mine, 

The skies, 
With myriad eyes, 
To gaze on thee. 

To the Greek epigram above, the trans- 
lation underneath it and these few pages 
are a sort of setting forth, one might 
say, as to various modes of the crystalli- 
zation of a gem. Or, seizing a brighter 
fancy and borrowing from stellar 
science, the versions given and others to 
be added are a comet-like trail of lumi- 

217 



218 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

nous dust attracted to, leastwise made 
light-bearing because of the glory of the 
head — certain of them at any rate given 
radiance by that star of first magnitude, 
Plato's most famous distich. 

The impelling beauty of the Greek 
epigram has never palled during the 
twenty-two centuries since the divine 
philosopher wrote it. Poets of finest 
fibre and boldest strength have embodied 
its emotion in longer singing. Nor has 
its attraction ceased there. Unnum- 
bered men and women in various times 
and lands, their nerves tingling with its 
perfection and seeming ease, have es- 
sayed to verse it in their own tongue. 

These facts I learned through a youth- 
ful experience. For, when I was a stu- 
dent in the University of Kansas, the 
only collegiate junior to elect Greek and 
therefore held by no trailing foot within 
prescribed curricula but seizing what- 
ever of Greek literature the large and 
lucid learning of our Professor of Greek, 



PLATO'S IMMORTAL EPIGRAM 219 

and his fine ardor for verity, put before 
me — from sheer charm of what I found 
going here and there through that litera- 
ture 's delights and finding the interpre- 
tation of the world its spirit must ever 
have for those who enter its virid fields 
seeking the real things of life — one day 
in turning leaves of an old anthology I 
chanced upon this great epigram of 
Plato's and translated it as the English 
verse stands above. The lines were only 
two of thousands and tens of thousands 
making strongest appeal to my enchanted 
sense of what was great, what real in 
literature. But when I met the epigram 
I felt, as youth may feel when imagina- 
tion is fired, that I must enter the song, 
must make some attempt to say it in my 
own speech — a verse so appealingly 
short, it seemed possible to wing ascent 
to its heaven by English pinions. 

In those hours of saturation, I had 
almost said intoxication, with the Greek 
distillation of life, there was doubtless 



220 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

stirring within tlie spirit of the absorbed, 
unselfconscious, American girl (if one 
may be permitted to speak of one's 
youth as of another being, another 
world) — there was doubtless stirring 
one of those growth-crises which come 
to the lives of young people generously 
nurtured, when, quite unforeseen, a new 
sense of space unfolds, a new largeness 
widens the horizon — ^when the fledgling 
passes to fresh pastures of which life 
before had vouchsafed no vision: 

*'Es giebt in Menschenleben Augenblicke 
Wo er dem Weltgeist naher ist als sonst/' 

What others had wrought at translat- 

> 

ing, or paraphrasing, the two lines of 
Plato I did not then know. Of all Greek 
epigrams the verse stood to me as most 
perfect in expressing the simplicity of 
Greek art, its grace, its concise definite- 
ness, its surpassing quality of propor- 
tion, its effect of standing alone, sufficient 
to itself, unaffected by outside life. The 



PLATO^S IMMORTAL EPIGRAM 221 

poem made such a swift, clean flight to 
the empyrean! Then there was its de- 
licious diction. 

And still another reason for the charm 
the epigram might work upon a student 
of the University of Kansas must lie in 
the star-sown night-skies of that land, 
rousing and lifting the imagination of 
those children of men who look up to 
them with loving curiosity — heavens 
marvellous in their myriad effulgent 
suns, the opalescent radiance of their 
Milky Way and infinities known only to 
the calculus of God. 

The distich persisting in my memory, 
some years later I sent my translation 
to a magazine in which it was published.^ 
Possibly the English words of a second 
and later version more exactly interpret 
their Greek cousins : 

Thou gazest on the stars, 

My star! 
"Would I might be, 

The skies 
1 8crihner% May, 1889. 



222 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

With many eyes, 
To look on thee. 

Interest in the epigram from my 
student essay in its lovely art, led me, 
in general reading and through years, 
to note translations, or if not exact 
translations paraphrasing, or approxi- 
mations of its imagination and diction, 
in our poets of English speech — ^pass- 
ages possibly inspired by Plato's dis- 
tich, or at least near kin to it. The notes 
perished by the wanderlust that is the 
heart of all detached papers. Those 
which follow are what I still have in 
memory. 

In the first place we ought to under- 
stand that, as Diogenes Laertius quoting 
Aristippus says. Aster (the third word 
in the Greek poem, aster, means star) — 
Aster was the name of a beautiful youth 
with whom Plato studied the science of 
the stars. The Greek Anthology of 
Hugo Grotius (edited by Bosch, 1797) 
puts it with Latin practicality: 



PLATO'S IMMORTAL EPIGRAM 223 

*'In eum qui Stella vocatur 

SteUa vides coeli stellas meus, o ego coelum 

Si sim, quo te oeulis pluribus adspiciam. ' ' 

If we begin with those confessing 
themselves purely translations we may- 
then take the often brilliant and very- 
beautiful paraphrasings by our English 
poets. 

The first in time, so far as I now re- 
call, is that of Thomas Stanley, who died 
in 1678: 

*'The stars, my Star, thou viewest: heaven 

might I be, 
That I with many eyes might gaze on thee.'* 

A fine rendering, and one which has the 
merit of keeping in the English the word 
heaven, exact equivalent of the Greek. 
A test of its excellence is that it seems 
modern, of our own day; that is, it is 
not circumscribed or limited by any 
mannerism of speech of the translator's 
day. Stanley was a cousin of Eichard 
Lovelace — ^him of the famous, fastidious, 



224 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

cavalier **To Althea from Prison." He 
was also a friend of James Shirley, 
writer of the perennial 

''Only the actions of the jnst 

Smell sweet, and hlossom in their dust" 

— ^which we still put in our anthologies, 
if not in our lives. A man of feeling for 
letters and of real cultivation and wealth, 
Thomas Stanley had a genuine lyric gift, 
which he used in good measure for trans- 
lating singers of other tongues. He 
gave himself, also, to the aid of those 
not so pecunious as himself. The pub- 
lic eye of his own day he considerably 
filled. A contemporary called him **the 
glory and admiration of his time." Yet 
by all but the long-visioned lover of 
literature he is now forgotten. We are 
calling him back to earth to-day because 
of his beautiful rendering of Plato's two 
lines. 

Lord Neaves, *'a senator of the col- 
lege of justices in Scotland," is perhaps 



PLATO'S IMMORTAL EPIGRAM 225 

the next translator of whom I had record. 
The Greek simplicity he presents in this 
way: 

*'My star, thou view'st the stars on high: 
Would that I were that spangled sky, 
That I, thence looking down on thee, 
With all its eyes thy charms might see/' 

Lord Neaves won higher honors in 
codifying the laws of nations than in 
writing metrical versions of Greek 
poetry. The stars on high, where stars 
commonly are, is palpably made to 
rhyme with spangled shy. Still, let us 
honor a great jurist who loved the quiet 
of his study, **the mighty minds of old,'' 
the ** never failing friends,'' and made 
translations from the Greek his pastime 
and delight. 

Peculiarities of this Scottish lawyer's 
version we find also in that of the witty 
Irishman and poet, Thomas Moore — a 
literary looseness or diffuseness, almost 
lack of conscience to our more truth- 
loving point of view. Moore's English 



226 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

versions from the Greek anthology are 
often marked by a boyish nnconseions- 
ness of Greek spirit and Greek form. 
They gleam, one might almost say glit- 
ter, with Celtic facility, and not infre- 
quently echo English drawing-room 
fashions of the end of the eighteenth and 
early nineteenth century. Of Moore's 
translation of the epigram I think we 
find these defining facts true : 

*'Why dost thou gaze upon the sky? 
Oh ! that I were that spangled sphere, 
And every star should be an eye, 
To wonder on thy beauties here ! ' ' 

Another version of the distich Sy- 
monds, in ^ his ** Studies of the Greek 
Poets ' ' ascribes to Frederick Farrar : 

*' Gazing at stars, my star? I would that I 

were the welkin, 
Starry with infinite eyes, gazing forever at 

thee!'' 

The English welkin with its unusedness 
and archaic feeling seems unfortunate, 



PLATO'S IMMORTAL EPIGRAM 227 

for the words of Plato are simple, nat- 
ural. Then, too, infinite and forever are 
not in the Greek — just as Lord Neaves' 
spangled shy, and Tom Moore 's spangled 
sphere and wonder on thy beauties here 
are not. And as for infinite eyes — a 
Greek was too genuine in his feeling for 
nature ever to say it — and he was also 
too reverent. Strange that Symonds 
with his sensitiveness and taste should 
have quoted such a translation! 

-If you lay beside it the rendering of 
the late Goldwin Smith, you will see more 
clearly the gifts of sincerity, fidelity, 
simplicity that mark that distinguished 
scholar's rendering; 

*'Dost scan the stars! would I were those 

skies, 
To gaze upon thee with their myriad eyes!'' 

Poetry, it is often said, is untranslata- 
ble. Spontaneous welling of sensibili- 
ties, an overflow of feeling impels the 
poet to song. The translator can hardly 
be excited by like spontaneity; his emo- 



228 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

tion must be secondary. When, there- 
fore, we essay mirroring the man of the 
original enthusiasm, we should, it would 
seem, approach his work with such rev- 
erence that we strip ourselves of our- 
selves, so far as possible, and enter that 
spirit of life of which he was a part. 
Then, only, may we voice his feeling in 
our phrase. That is, a translation seems 
to be a bringing of the poet's knowledge, 
comprehensiveness, sympathy, sensibil- 
ity to speak through ourselves as his in- 
strument — a flute if you will — not an ex- 
pressing ourselves through his ideas. In 
this opinion I may be differing with my 
friend, Mr. Charles Fletcher Lummis, in 
his admirable verse ^ recalling the great 
distich : 

*'Star of me, watching the mother skies 
Where thine elder sisters be, 

Would I were heaven with all its eyes — 
All of its eyes on thee!" 
1 In McClure's Magazine, February, 1911. 



PLATO^S IMMORTAL EPIGRAM 229 

In passing from the solitary transla- 
tions of this epigram to the often very 
beautiful and suggestive paraphrasing 
by our English poets, we should, in point 
of time, take up those four lines in a son- 
net which Palgrave, in his ^* Golden 
Treasury'* ascribes to Joshua Sylvester. 
The sonnet, by the bye, I do not find in 
collections of Sylvester's poems printed 
near his time, and others would deny it 
him saying in none of his poems did he 
reach such heights as the sonnet scales. 
That is poor reasoning, even if facts bore 
it out. Sylvester did climb with swelling 
and reverberating song, as you may 
easily see by turning to pages 304 to 307 
of this book. The four lines of his para- 
phrase which are the ninth, tenth, 
eleventh and twelfth of the sonnet, read 
in this wise : 

**Were you the earth, dear Love, and I the 

skies, 
My love should shine on you like to the sun. 



230 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

And look upon you with ten thousand eyes 
Till heaven wax'd blind, and till the world 
were done." 

Sylvester was born one year before 
Shakespeare. The sonnet ascribed to 
him, and unmistakably of his day, evi- 
dences that this epigram of Plato's, so 
perfect that it is modern to every age, 
was familiar to the Elizabethans, and 
even then stirring the human heart and 
hand to work its gold into English wear. 

Shakespeare himself seems to have 
known its beauty. A critic has queried 
whether the mighty genius of the poet 
had not taken the conception and trans- 
muted it, as that genius transmuted much 
of the best of its earthly day and sealed 
it in marvellous verse. For instance, in 
reading the following lines in the sec- 
ond scene of the third act of **Eomeo and 
Juliet,'' you must, with a knowledge 
of Plato's epigram, pause and reread, 
and note the ascent of emotion, and won- 
der if the Greek, or any translation 



PLATO'S IMMORTAL EPIGRAM 231 

Shakespeare may have seen, played any 
part in their composition: — 

**And, when he shall die, 
Take him and cut him out in little stars, 
And he will make the face of heaven so fine, 
That all the world will be in love with night, 
And pay no worship to the garish sun.'' 

Dodd, in this book **The Epigram- 
matists," and quoting Steevens, I be- 
lieve, calls attention to a play **The Wis- 
dom of Doctor DodypoU," which was 
acted before the year 1596. Editors of 
Shakespeare have conjectured that 
** Romeo and Juliet'' was written in 
1596. Impulse for our quoted passage 
may, therefore, have been in this passage 
of the forgotten play : 

"The glorious parts of faire Lucilia, 

Take them and joine them in the heavenly 

spheres : 
And fixe them there as an eternal light, 
For lovers to adore and wonder at." 

A far cry from that to Shakespeare's 



232 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

racy, clear-cut English and overwhelm- 
ing emotion, you will say. But the 
author of **The Wisdom of Doctor 
DodypoU," as well as the author of 
^* Romeo and Juliet,'' may have known 
Plato's epigram. The age of Jonson 
and Drummond and Drayton was not 
one to let its grace lie hid, as we said 
above. In Shakespeare's restatement, 
whatever the source of the conception, is 
the new-bom outlook on life, the Eliza- 
bethan strength of interpreting nature 
at first hand, and a loveliness of phrase 
that make the passage his own.^ 

lA beautiful simile has appealed to us humans 
since long befqre the days of Homer, master in simile. 
Let us consider it for a moment. Passages that call 
to mind the manner of Plato's two lines are as far 
back as in the old Greeks when we have an unknown 
poet singing in a way, only singing more simply and 
purely, after the manner of this translation which 
Moore made: 

"I wish I could like zephyr steal 

To wanton o'er thy mazy vest; 
And thou wouldst ope thy bosom-veil, 

And take me panting to thy breast! 

"I wish I might a rose-bud grow 



PLATO'S IMMORTAL EPIGRAM 233 

Not an Elizabethan but a Victorian 
poet, Francis Bourdillon, has made a dis- 

And thou wouldst cull me from the bower, 
To place me on that breast of snow, 

Where I should bloom, a wintry flower." 

Sonnets to a mistress' eyebrows, and also such 
similes, as for instance, Shakespeare's: 

"O, that I were a glove upon that hand. 
That I might touch that cheek!" 

did not begin with modern times. Nor do they owe 
their origin to the sentiment of chivalry, as often 
claimed. Have we not just now seen an old Greek 
poet talking in phrase as direct and untrammeled 
as a neo-romanticist might use? And not unlike 
expressions are among old Greek love tales and nov- 
els. Also they are in the ancient writings of the 
Hebrews. 

A song of like and exquisite simile, if we may step 
to the very bounds of digression, is by a certain Rob- 
ert Burns, against whom one could never bring a 
charge of borrowing from the Greek. The beauty 
and lilt of the first of the verses, by an unknown 
Scottish poet, are said to have so seized and warmed 
Burns' fancy that he sang in pure and bird-like note 
the equally beautiful second : 

"G were my ^ove yon lilac fair, 
Wi' purple blossoms to the spring; 

And I, a bird to shelter there. 
When wearied on my little wing! 

How I wad mourn, when it was torn 
By autumn wild, and winter rude! 



234 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

tinctly modern suggestion of tlie great 
Greek's distich in the oft sung and oft 
quoted : (^ 

* * The Night has a thousand eyes 

And the day but one ; 
Yet the light of the whole world dies 
With the setting sun. 

* * The Mind has a thousand eyes 

And the heart but one ; 
Yet the light of a whole life dies 

When love is done. ' ' 

From this long wandering in pages of 
other poets suggestive of Plato the poet 
— from other similes of ardor to the real, 
tentative embodiment of the great epi- 
gram in -others' works — ^we turn to 

But I wad sing on wanton wing, 
When youthfu' May its bloom renewed. 

O gin my love were yon red rose, 

That grows upon the castle wa' ; 
And I mysel' a drap o' dew, 

Into her bonnie breast to fa' 
Oh, there beyond expression blest, 

I'd feast on beauty a' the night; 
Seal'd on her silk-saft faulds to rest, 

Tin fley'd awa' by Phoebus' light." 



PLATO'S IMMORTAL EPIGRAM 235 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge ^s poem *^0n 
an Autumnal Evening^' not only to find 
the distich of Plato, but also a part of 
that epigram by the unknown Greek poet 
which, in the footnote, Moore translated 
for us. *^To fan my love,'* wrote Cole- 
ridge : 

*^To fan my love I'd be the evening gale, 
Mourn in the soft folds of her swelling vest, 
And flutter my faint pinions on her breast! 
On seraph wing I'd float a dream by night, 
To soothe my love with shadows of delight; 
Or soar aloft to be the spangled skies. 
And gaze upon her with a thousand eyes." 

And now at last we come to the supra- 
mundane genius of Shelley closing the 
ninth canto of his ethical cries in *^The 
Eevolt of Islam" with the great epi- 
gram's emotion: 

**Fair star of life and love," I cried, **my 

soul's delight, 
Why lookest thou on the crystalline skies ? 
O that my spirit were yon Heaven of night, 
"Which gazes on thee with its thousand eyes !" 



236 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

When I began I forecast this writing 
merely as a note setting forth interpre- 
tations of Patd^s immortal lines. We 
have gone far afield — sympathetic, asso- 
ciative memories leap one upon another 
when we once give the leash and bear us 
far beyond the metes and bounds of mere 
adducing comment. But the echoes of 
Plato's great leit-motiv, to change our 
simile, and the snatches of heaven-sent 
song we have heard by the way, are am- 
ple excuse for our wandering — if excuse 
need be. 

In old-time, student days in the Uni- 
versity of Kansas, in our reading the 
great Greek idealist,— yes, I make bold 
to say, even in these times when ideal- 
ism is often looked upon as a sort of in- 
tellectual degeneracy, a variety of atav- 
ism — I make bold to say, and quite meg- 
aphonicly, we gloried in Plato's teach- 
ings and in his marvellous art of writing 
out his thoughts — ^we used, in those old 
days, when meeting some conception, 



PLATO'S IMMORTAL EPIGRAM 237 

idea, expression, we had deemed modern, 
frequently to exclaim — quoting, I ven- 
ture from memory to say, Emerson re- 
ferring to Plato's supremacy in the 
world of philosophy — **It is all in 
Plato!" So, too, from what we have 
here in these few pages seen is a most 
distinguished and exalted simile, a su- 
preme expression of idealizing love. 



FABLES OF BRONZE AND 

IRON AGES: OF 

TO-DAY 



I happened to see a living company of them 
[ephemerae] on a leaf, who appeared to be in con- 
versation. You know I understand all the inferior 
animal tongues. 

"To Madame Brillon of Passy," 
Benjamin Franklin. 

He that cannot contract the sight of his mind as 
well as disperse and dilate it, wanteth a great faculty. 
"Of the Advancement of Learning," 
Fbancis Bacon. 

Those loose Robes or common Veils that disguised 
or covered the true Beauty of Poetry's features. . . . 
This was done first by ^sop in Greek, but the Vein 
was much more antient in the Eastern Regions, and 
much in Vogue. 

"Of Poetry," 
• Sib William Temple. 



FABLES OF BRONZE AND 

IRON AGES: OF 

TO-DAY 

Fables are the simplest of all stories. 
They sprang into being before conscious 
records of human history began, as soon, 
probably, as early peoples of this * kittle 
O, the earth," had a language large 
enough to tell a story in. Long after, 
when human life had read a meaning in 
the fact that it is, and its significance had 
gladdened the up-looking spirit of man, 
re-telling of the stories brightened fire- 
sides gleaming in caves, and helped 
through dull, gloomy days men and 
women whetting stone knives, and hew- 
ing arrow-heads, and sewing hide-shirts. 
Thousands upon thousands of years ago, 

lAn essay written before the publication of an 
article or two citing like illustrations. 
241 



242 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

we say, at a time when all earth's mys- 
teries in beast and tree, upon land and 
sea, voiced to the primal folk an in- 
alienable kinship with themselves, there 
lived, in that early morning of our race, 
the first inventors of the story. 

They were fable-makers. They won- 
dered: they brooded: they worshiped; 
and became the primitive poets delight- 
ing to bring to the soul of their people 
what they had discovered. Naively 
fashioning universal truths, they showed 
what life had taught them by depicting a 
neighbor's traits controlling some elder 
brother of man. In other words, the 
fable-mal^er, apt at weaving tales from 
his own spirit and what his world had 
written upon it, presented human char- 
acteristics embodied in, or a human ex- 
perience enacted among, creatures fa- 
miliar to his listeners. Men and beasts, 
we say, stood in more intimate kinship 
than now, and the story's situation and 
imagery were not far from their every- 



BRONZE AGE FABLES 243 

day affairs. Such a tale was bound to 
catch the attention of the less reflective 
man and make him pause, wonder and 
perhaps take lesson. For perhaps 
human nature had then the weakness 
that an Englishman lamented countless 
centuries later, ** Nothing will go down, 
if it be not seasoned with a tale." 

Lacking every worldly artificiality 
with which human traits stand forth in 
our conscious literature, more simple 
than Garden-of-Eden simplicity — for 
into Eden man had entered, in the world 
of those early days the beasts of the 
fable-making poet felt and thought and 
talked as humans. Author's and pub- 
lic's simplicity was of life in cave and 
lake-dwelling and the sunlit sward that 
lay before the jungle. 

Thus, doubtless, the early peoples of 
our earth, far off in the dim mists of 
old millenia, had the beginnings of 
story-telling. Human imagination con- 
structed and human love of the ideal vi- 



244 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

sion credulously accepted. Ages whose 
factors we can not estimate passed in 
the growth and habit. 

This nascent literature, these fables, 
may have been metaphor writ large. 
Primitive men talk in metaphor ; for un- 
developed peoples must express them- 
selves in concrete form. The stories 
may at first have lain in the naked sim- 
plicity of a sentence, a complete undress 
and freedom. But in time they waxed 
in strength and length, and travelled 
far — for generations of the human fam- 
ily, led by divinities of the ideal, were 
ever splitting off from parent stocks and 
seeking lands to make their own. Rec- 
ords of the tales the migrators put on 
stones, on earthen and waxen tile, on 
gold and silver cup, on papyrus, in carv- 
ing and painting and tapestry. Almost 
every land where a clan or tribe settled 
and evolved their arts and governments 
has remnants in keeping. 

The tales journeying and expanding 



BRONZE AGE FABLES 245 

in restful new homes, drew to them- 
selves embellishments and conventions. 
The human life that treasured them was 
in every circle of the sun growing and 
enriching. Fables thus, like all our 
poetry, all our prose, all mental products, 
became aggregations. But they are the 
simplest of aggregations, and after all, 
even in their broad diffusion they vary 
little. Perhaps the folk through centu- 
ries of the eld had the loyalty to first 
form that characterizes children to-day 
and insistently kept a crystallization of 
a favorite story. What had become a 
common possession of their tribe, they 
probably safe-guarded with the instinct 
of self-preservation, and would suffer 
their recounters no deviation from the 
form which emphasized their race man- 
ners and customs, and their race art. 

The original metaphor, of which we 
spoke above, had somewhat of a didactic 
aim, an evident moral. Therefore fables 
must reduce rudimentary inductions of 



246 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

the mind of man — save tlie early cave- 
man's inductions — ^to an ethical truth. 
They must etch human gropings for a 
moral order of life — ^when such an order 
was vaguely conceived of. From the be- 
ginnings, we say, the tendency of the 
telling of a fable must have been what it 
is to-day — practical teachings of ethical 
relations of life. An instance is the 
story of Eve and the serpent — at first 
blush not showing conscious, open fic- 
tion, but really a fabulizing of the sin 
and sequent disaster of taking short cuts 
to great accomplishment, rather than 
working within The Law. Men's ethical 
sense grew and in time forced the moral 
of the tale to extend itself, until the de- 
liberation, patent and confessed, became 
what this fable teacheth, hac fabula 

docet, o fJLvOo^ BrjXoL, 

That those early story-tellers for the 
people, ancients to those who are an- 
cients to us, came to make fables with 
deliberate intent, for the untrained 



BRONZE AGE FABLES 247 

mind's deligM and instruction, is clear. 
The Old Testament's book of Judges 
preserves, in its ninth chapter, a most 
striking and beautiful instance of con- 
scious knowledge of such fiction and its 
forceful application. Jotham, son of 
Gideon, tells to the men of Sechem how, 
*^The trees went forth on a time to 
anoint a king over them'' . . . and 
finally * ' The bramble said unto the trees, 
If in truth ye anoint me king over you, 
then come and put your trust in my 
shadow: and if not, let fire come out of 
the bramble, and devour the cedars of 
Lebanon. ' ' 

This fable is perhaps an early product 
of the Hebrew genius. If not, but was 
brought from the east in times of old 
when the peoples of Mesopotamia and 
their western neighbors, the people of 
Judaea, had reciprocal relations of cul- 
ture, at any rate it seems to have been 
a folk-possession which the author of the 
part of the book of Judges in which it 



248 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

is embedded, borrowed and applied. To- 
day 's criticism pronounces the part 
younger than the ninth century before 
Christ. 

After recorded time we hear of ^sop 
composing and recomposing fables for 
the Greeks — about the sixth century be- 
fore Christ. But before ^ sop's day 
such tales flourished among the Greeks 
— we know from Homer and from the 
earliest complete fable in European 
literature, Hesiod's story of **The Hawk 
and Nightingale.'' And the ^sopic 
fable was the foundation idea of the cele- 
brated satire on women of Simonides of 
Amorgos — in its tracing the lineage of 
ten different types of women back to ani- 
mals. This Simonides is said to have 
been a mature man in 693 b. c, 

^sop possibly heard recitations of 
oriental apologues while in service at the 
court of the Lydian king, Croesus. In 
his century travellers were continually 
passing between India and peoples of the 



BRONZE AGE FABLES 249 

eastern Mediterranean. Possibly, from 
some wandering pundit basking in the 
luxury of Croesus' court, and his recital 
of such tales as are ascribed to the 
oriental Bidpai, ^sop gained his inspi- 
ration for the fable and led to its restitu- 
tion. That the tales were popular 
among the later Greeks, Aristophanes' 
comedies let us know; and another light 
Plato brings us when he tells of Soc- 
rates turning ^sopian tales into verse 
in his final days in prison. 

Centuries after the hunchback master 
the fable took, at the hands of the Greek 
Babrius, the form in which it abides to 
this day. Just what that century was 
no one can say. A German critic, Cru- 
sius, says Babrius wrote in an age of the 
Eoman emperors when taste agreed the 
greatest virtue of a writer to be sim- 
plicity. Not far from the days of Bab- 
rius — some say before on the ground that 
Phaedrus makes no mention of a cat while 
Babrius tells various stories about that 



250 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

familiar fellow — Phaedrus, a Thracian 
slave, wrought the innocuous tales into 
Latin, for the moralizing Eoman's de- 
light and instruction. 

Thus the fable, that is, many of our 
well-known fables, flourished, and always 
best among peoples of southern latitudes 
with whom they are said to have had 
their birth. 

Even after the days of the Judges, to 
which we refer above, those fellow-dwel- 
lers of the Greeks near the vine-clad 
slopes of the Mediterranean, the He- 
brews, kept on using the fable. With 
their genius for the concrete they turned 
about its ^oint and aiming merely to il- 
lustrate men's higher life by the lower, 
they called it the parable. It served for 
imaginative appeal to the people, and be- 
came of stupendous import. The book 
of Jonah, for instance, ascribed to about 
250 B. c, is a fable — a parable about so- 
cial exclusives. 

To the uses of the fable-parable the 



BRONZE AGE FABLES 251 

New Testament brings a mightier wit- 
ness: — **Tlie disciples said, Why speak- 
est thou to them in parables? He an- 
swered and said, Because it is given unto 
you to know the mysteries . . . but to 
them it is not given. . . . This people's 
heart is waxed gross, and their ears are 
dull of hearing, and their eyes have 
closed. ' ' 

Here abides evidence that the fable, 
in those times, by profoundest wisdom, 
served to reach the rudimentary mind of 
men — ^when their ears were dull of hear- 
ing and their eyes the Teacher would un- 
close to the significance of life. 

Thus peoples of old deliberately fos- 
tered the fable, an early poem, for the 
untrained mind's instruction and delight. 
For that we moderns make it, and some- 
times, even like present-day Arabs, for 
grown-ups. But most we make it for 
children, because a child loves a make- 
believe world; he likes to escape this 
world of hard facts and enter its life only 



252 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

througli his fancy. Then, also we make 
it for the child because our conviction is 
well-worn that the child in his growth 
repeats the development of the race. 

The first conception of a fable, we have 
seen, is a sort of sly humor. The ancient 
fable-maker would play an amusing light 
round human characteristics, he would 
lay hold of the grey matter of the aver- 
age head and set in motion its zygomatic 
muscles by making a crane, a lion, a 
mouse, an earthen pot or a tree speak out 
subject to laws controlling human kind 
and seemingly humans alone. Thus the 
fable becomes a deliberate make-believe, 
a designed work of art with a meaning. 

Classic writers, and by that we mean 
the old Greek and Eoman, knew from 
the instinctive sense of art that blessed 
them that the fable should be a com- 
plete unit, never at variance with sim- 
pler conditions; and it should have the 
honesty and power that come from famil- 
iarity with, and easy knowledge of, 



BRONZE AGE FABLES 253 

everyday life — a crow is a clever thief 
and lie would steal cheese, a hare does 
run swiftly, an ant is an industrious 
layer-by. The story should, in other 
words, be exact to truth — ^truth as it 
would be if beasts thought and felt as 
humans, and were to hold the recounters ' 
pen. Thus the old writers produced 
their fables. 

And with incalculable success we re- 
peat, — especially after the stories were 
by oft-repetition set to the minds of the 
Greeks. But the new workers moved 
cautiously and with reserve. They had 
moderation, the Greek golden mean. 
Into this little art, as into their great- 
est, they put the impersonality that 
marks the classic expression. Not be- 
cause they forecast their manner and 
said they would and sat down with stylus 
in hand to write it, did they do this. 
They wrote the fable with the imper- 
sonal note because that bore out their in- 
born conception of art, that was their 



254 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

conception of life — and a racial concep- 
tion of art, because it is a conception of 
life, must work itself out even in expand- 
ing a metaphor. What the teller thought 
or felt, his views by the bye, his emotions, 
in no wise figured in his story and could 
not enter into the structure of his sen- 
tences. 

The art of the tale, to put it another 
way, did not reflect the subject, was not 
personal. It was objective. It pre- 
sented a view of the outer world into 
which the teller was not projected, not 
reflected. It stood alone, apart from 
subjective, interpretative feeling and im- 
aginings infused into it. Its appeal was 
by reflection to the typical, the general, 
not by emotion to the individual. No 
disturbing subjective excitement, no glow 
nor tendency of the writer to exaggera- 
tion warmed it. Personal feeling neither 
touched nor set a nerve aquiver. Prob- 
ability, exactness even to economy of 
material, simplicity, universality were 



BRONZE AGE FABLES 255 

in its appeal. That is, the art stood upon 
a cool and calm intellectuality and truth 
to general life. It must move by the 
force inhering in its subject, by the sub- 
ject's fitness for its purpose and the per- 
fectness of presentation. This was as 
true of the minor art of fable-making as 
of the great art of the Greeks. Those 
people viewed the body and soul not as 
distinct, separate, but as forming one 
unit, the human being as a whole. In 
such a conception there can be no intense 
emotion, no dominating *^ temperament,'' 
no minor many-imaginings — merely col- 
lective, generally social, race experience. 
The modem, in contrast, demands a 
fervor working in the writer's brain and 
gaining its own spiritual expression. It 
confesses to an appeal for the emotional 
response and human interest of the 
reader. It carries its own ** atmos- 
phere ' ' of specific quality, unique aspect, 
the personality of the teller comes for- 
ward. It is individualistic and demo- 



256 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

cratic as to its sense of reserve. It acts 
and gains by minute accumulated touches 
of detail and by the contagion of excite- 
ment. 

Yet a popular fable might, and in the 
old way, in stating a general truth, teach 
a good part of the conduct of life. Take, 
for instance, an old version of a fable, 
probably among the oldest of fables — so 
old that a Greek book of the second or 
third century makes Sophocles deliver 
an epigram in referring to it — the fable 
of Helius, the Sun, and Boreas, the North 
Wind. Plutarch, also, tells the tale in 
his *' Precepts for the Married" to illus- 
trate the persuading with soft ways — 
'*this most women do," adds the phi- 
losopher. 

Our version follows closely and simply 
the picturesque iambic telling of Babrius : 

The North Wind and the Sun 

**The story goes that a great strife 
rose twixt the North Wind and the Sun, 



BRONZE AGE FABLES 267 

as to wMcli of the two could take a gar- 
ment of skin off a wayfaring rustic. 

** First Boreas blew as he blows in 
Thrace, for he thought that by force he 
could strip away the hide. But the fel- 
low would not let go at all. On the con- 
trary he shivered from the cold, and 
binding his hands with the skin's edge, 
drew it about him, got down against a 
rock and bent his back to its projection. 

^*Then the Sun peeped out. First he 
eased the man from the chill of the harsh 
wind. Then he kept on sending warmth, 
till a glow suddenly seized the wearer and 
he stripped himself and tossed the gar- 
ment aside. 

' * So was Boreas beaten in the contest. 
The fable says, * Grentleness, child, before 
passion. You will make your way by 
persuasion rather than by force, what- 
ever befalls you.' " 

Now this fable is a deliberate story for 
the untrained mind. Its moral is pal- 



258 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

pable, and its jumble of truth and fan- 
tasy clear. It is a tale told in severely 
simple Greek fashion, reserved, bearing 
in its lines no appeal to the listener's 
emotion. 

From the English Sir Eoger L 'Es- 
trange of more than two hundred years 
ago, so-called *^ prince of translators," 
from a book of his printed in London in 
1694, we take a version that shows Greek 
influence still controlling — ^yet our Eng- 
lish imaginativeness will not let it off 
purely and with the almost barren detail 
of the Greek : ^ 

** There happened a Controversie be- 

1 In the las%, half of the seventeenth century J2sop 
had come into great vogue in England. Translations 
into English verse, such for instance as John Ogilby's, 
were not infrequent. Toward the end of the century, 
in 1691, ^sop was "a book universally read and 
taught in our schools," L'Estrange wrote, "the boys 
break their teeth upon the shells, without even com- 
ing near the kernel. They learn the fables by les- 
sons, and the moral is the least part of our care in 
a child's instruction." Such facts, L'Estrange con- 
tinued, prompted to his translations — ^versions *l3eing 
equally beautiful of their kind," wrote an English 
contemporary, "with the verse of La Fountain." 



BRONZE AGE FABLES 259 

twixt the Sun and the Wind, which was 
the Stronger of the Two; and they put 
the Point upon This Issue : There was a 
Traveller upon the Way, and which of 
the Two could make That Fellow Quit 
his Cloak should carry the Cause. The 
wind fell presently a Storming, and threw 
Hail-Shot over and ahove in the very 
Teeth of him. The Man Wraps himself 
up, and keeps Advancing in spight of 
the Weather: But this Gust in a short 
Time Blew over ; and then the Sun Brake 
out, and fell to Work upon him with his 
Beams; but still he Pushes forward. 
Sweating, and Panting, till in the End 
he was forced to Quit his Cloak, and lay 
himself down upon the Ground in a Cool 
Shade for Belief: So that the Sun, in 
the Conclusion, carry 'd the Point." 

A version by the learned Chinese Mun 
Mooy Seen-Shang, translated by his 
pupil Sloth, is curiously severe and dy- 
namic in its English dress : 

**Sun with Wind mutually-wrangled 



260 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

strong weak both not mntually-yield ex- 
tremely wished one compare high low 
unexpectedly saw road-upon travelling- 
man put-on-had a-cloak hurridly-hastily 
and coming Sun said wonderful!! won- 
derful extreme!! you I each self -call 
great not can divide now coming-man 
body put-on outside-cloak you I each put- 
in-force magical-art can cause travell-er 
put-off clothes he-who does gain with- 
that mutually wagered the Wind then 
first put-in-force plans great whirlwind 
suddenly rose nearly-took travell-er out- 
side-garment blew-fell. Travell-er by- 
means-of hand defended-held obtained- 
escape Wind plans since not could do and 
come-to Sun make plans cloud-clear sky- 
empty shining-splendour fierce-er sweat 
flo wed-down two jaws hot-air difficult to- 
sustain only-could put-off outer-garment 
therefore Sun was gainer truly!! As 
world-men in-vain cling-to blood-tem- 
per's valor many lead-to have loss con- 



BRONZE AGE FABLES 261 

trary not as soft-gentle measure strength 
obtain no unlooked-for-evil.'' 



In our country and to-day the story 
would run somewhat after the following 
version. In keeping with a supposed 
mythopoeic sense of the less-developed, 
it would speak from the mouth of an old- 
fashioned nurse, probably a black 
mammy. A reason of mammy's telling 
it would also be that we feel the south 
to be the native temperature of the fable. 
Her story would bring in a bit of ego- 
tism, make evident in a very patent 
way the individuality of the teller — ^pos- 
sibly with endeavor to touch up the 
humor of the tale. It would appeal to 
the feelings of the listener, stir and warm 
the heart probably by engrossing details. 
Its gain or basis of appeal would be 
through the emotions, would not be 
mainly intellectual that is to say. Still, 
underneath our version of this old-time 



262 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

tale we must find that truth to human 
life which the ancients always demanded, 
which the child demands, and we grown- 
ups, perhaps, in less degree. 

Ole Mam Blizzaed and Mastah 
Sunshine 

Dat mornin ole Mam Blizzard an 
Mastah Sunshine had dere quarrel wuz 
a dreadful contensionin. 

Ye see, honey, Mastah Sunshine riz 
red an sleepy dis mornin I'se a tellin ye 
about, an he looked to havin it all his 
own way. Fer a time after sun-up he 
wuz nigh shakin all de yallow light out 
of does eyes of hisn. De birds wuz a 
singin, de flowers wuz a blowin, an de 
wind wuz as soft as cotton in de boll. 

But jess dat minute de folks wuz rub- 
bin dere eyes fer all de glory — puff! 
puff!! puff!!! came ole Mam Blizzard 
sailin along on a pack of clouds. An de 
ole lady pulled a veil over Mastah Sun- 
shine 's face quicker 'n you can wink. 



BRONZE AGE FABLES 263 

Praps you don't know who ole Mam 
Blizzard is, honey, de ole lady dat rides 
high as de moon. She's from way far 
up in Mountany. Way up in de moun- 
tains, where de rivers all is ice, Mam 
Blizzard lives, and all de little Blizzards. 
De chillun hang up in bags roun de sides 
o dere ma's cabin. 

Who is de Blizzard chilluns' pa? 
Laws sakes, honey, seems like as if it 
wuz Mistah Wind-o- Christmas — ^him dat 
comes hoUerin an tearin down de chim- 
bley. But xactly I disremembers. 

But dis mornin I'se tellin ye about, 
ole Miss Blizzard wuz a ridin high in de 
air an out for a fracas wif Master Sun- 
shine. Dose two never could agree no 
way — Mastah Sunshine an Mam Bliz- 
zard. Dey's dat contrarious dat where 
Mastah Sunshine is Mam Blizzard never 
will abide, an Miss Blizzard bein by Mas- 
tah Sunshine '11 never show his face. 

Dis yere mornin I'se tellin ye about, 
Mastah Sunshine sittin over dare in de 



264 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

sky, he call out sort o laughin like when 
he see Miss Blizzard, an he say, **I'se 
stronger dan you is.'' 

^* What's dat you says?" cry ole 
Mam Blizzard, stopin short all a suddin 
an rubbin her nigh ear with a weeny 
piece o black cloud, ** What's dat you 
says?" 

'*I say I'se stronger dan you is," an- 
swer Mistah Sunshine, an he wunk an 
eye at pretty Miss Moon jess gettin to 
bed behind de hill. 

Ole Miss Blizzard wuz mad. *^You is 
stronger, is you?" say she. 

*'Yes, I is," say Mastah Sunshine. 

'*Well, we '11 see," say de ole lady 
settlin down on dem clouds o hern, **Now 
here, Mastah Sunshine, here is Colonel 
Lampster's ole black mammy, an declare 
to goodness she's got on de Colonel's 
bearskin coat. Now I say to you, Mastah 
Sunshine," say ole Mam Blizzard, **I 
say to you, if you can take dat dere coat 



BRONZE AGE FABLES 265 

off dis yere mammy sooner 'n I can, den 
you is stronger dan I is. " 

Mastah Sunshine he stop a minute an 
thunk, an den he agree to what de ole 
lady say. An all dis yere time I wuz 
lopin long de road for to see de doctor 
on count o my punyin ague. 

Sudden like, quicker 'n a lamb can 
jerk his tail, Mam Blizzard began fer to 
blow. My gumbo! how she blowed! 
An spry ! an cole ! Down she come outn 
de sky an up she lift one side you pa^s 
ole bear coat. Den dis did n't doin no 
good, roun she whisk an lift up tother. 
Den up she stretch her hand under de 
coat an pull at de collar. Den she go 
fer de buttons an sack at em, an sack. 
Den dis yere did n't doin no good, she 
try an crope inside an almost done freeze 
me. 

But every time Miss Blizzard goes fer 
dat bearskin, I'se dat chillin dat I pulls 
it tighter. I don't hanker fer Mam Bliz- 



266 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

zard, honey. Me an she wuz always 
mislikin. 

Now bumbye, after a powerful pullin 
an a haulin, an I all de time holdin on 
to dat coat, Mam Blizzard get roarin 
mad an begin fer to send bats o ice. 
She think like I take off dat coat to 
cover my head, an so she grab it. But 
I jess dat contrarious dat I turns up the 
coat tail, an on I goes cantalopin down 
de road. 

So fer nigh a half an hour Mam 
Blizzard pestered me. De ole lady is 
prouder dan de queen o Sheeny when she 
set matchin diamond rings wif King 
Solomon, an she think o dem chillun of 
hern way up in Mountany, all hangin up 
in bags roun de cabin walls, waitin fer 
dere icecicle icecream, an she did n't 
w^ant to be beat. 

But bumbye Mastah Sunshine he poke 
out his face a little, an say, say he, 
**How 's you gettin along, Mam Bliz- 
zard T* — an he sort o laugh like. 



BRONZE AGE FABLES 267 

*^It 's a mighty spry nigger, dis yere 
ole mammy," say Mam Blizzard talkin 
back over de grey cloud she was hitchin 
to de top of a cottonwood, **aii I don't 
seem to get dat coat. I '11 try once more 
howmsoever. ' ' 

Den de ole lady crope np sly an quiet 
like, an kind o go zip, an bat me on de 
north side. Den she go zap, an bat me 
on de south. Den again she go down 
under de coat an rack me like de ague. 
An all de time I jess keep on cagin an 
holdin faster to dat coat. 

By dis time Mam Blizzard wuz clean 
indiginant, honey. She stop a minute an 
scowl, an den she onhitch her grey cloud 
and sail off behind de hickory grove. 
Seemed like she 'd never speak to no- 
body. 

Den Mistah Sunshine, he try to show 
how strong he wuz. First he let a wink 
right square in front. I feels like a 
waffle fresh from de iron an I onties my 
head. Den he wunk on one side an I 



268 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

wuz dat hot I muss plumb onbutton dat 
coat. He kep a wunkin. 

All dis time I 'se cagin long de road, 
but soon I 'se so done het all over dat 
I clean took off dat bearskin coat an sit 
down by de Sweetwater spring to cool. 

So it wuz dat Mastah Sunshine won 
over ole Mam Blizzard. He wuz 
stronger dan de ole lady cordin to what 
she offered, for he 'd taken you pa's ole 
bear coat off your ole mammy. 

Miss Blizzard wuz so shamed dat she 
kep away and did n't show her face in 
dese yere parts fer a coon's age after. 

An ever .since dat mornin, honey, I 'se 
been a noticin dat warm is powerfuUer 
dan cole, an de white folks an de black 
is stronger when dey smiles like Mastah 
Sunshine dan when day scowls like ole 
Mam Blizzard. 

Take another famous fable and make 
as simple an English version as the 



BRONZE AGE FABLES 269 

Greek of the four-line choliambic of 
Ignatius Diaconus^ — said by his editor, 
Muller, to have flourished in the ninth 
century. 

The Grasshoppee and the Ant 
**In frost time a Grasshopper asked food 

of an Ant. 
The Ant said to him, ^How is it you have 

n't anyr 
*In summer,' he returned, *I sing shrilly.' 
'Dance in winter,' she said, * do not yearn 

after food.' " 

Our English William Caxton, a volu- 
minous translator, **at Westmynstre In 
the yere of oure Lorde m.cccc. Ixxxiij" 
made a version of this ** Fable of the 
Ant and of the Sygale" and opened as 
well as closed its recital with 1 'envoy. 

**It is good to purveye hym self in the 
somer season of suche thynges wherof 
he shalle myster and have nede in wynter 



270 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

season. As thou mayst see by this pres- 
ent fable Of the sygalle whiche in the 
wynter tyme went and demaunded of the 
ant somme of her Corne for to ete. 

*^And thenne the ant sayd to the 
sygalle, what has thou done al the somer 
last passed? And the sygalle answered 
I have songe. 

*'And after sayd the ante to her. Of 
my corne shallt not thou none have. 
And yf thou hast songe alle the somer 
danse now in wynter. 

**And therefore there is one tyme for 
to doo some labour and werk. And one 
tyme for to have rest. For he that 
werketh not ne doth no good shal have 
ofte at his teeth grete cold and lacke at 
his nede." 

The celebrated Sir Eoger tells the 
same tale in his edition of 1694: 

'*As the Ants were Airing their Pro- 
visions One Winter, Up come a Hungry 



BRONZE AGE FABLES 271 

Grasshopper to ^em, and begs a Charity. 
They told him that he should have 
Wrought in Summer, if he would not 
have Wanted in Winter. Well, says the 
Grasshopper, but I was not Idle neither ; 
for I Sung out the Whole Season. Nay 
then, said they, You shall e'en do Well 
to make a Merry Year on 't, and Dance 
in Winter to the Tune you Sung in 
Summer. ' ' 

You see it reads with Greek reserve 
and simplicity notably retained. Like 
other stories of L 'Estrange 's book its 
excellence has kept it a living publication 
to this day. Yet, now, and in our coun- 
try, a Southern mammy would tell the 
fable somewhat after this detailed and 
abounding fashion: 

MiSTAH HOP-O-GEASS AN MiSS AnT 

One summer day Mistah Hop-o-grass 
sit out in de yard yonder, an he harp 
powerful loud. Dar he sit playin an 



272 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

singin from soon after sun-up till de 
dew wet Ms whistle at night. 

So Mistah Hop-o-grass wuz, an so wuz 
he goin on, when Miss Ant come a-puUin 
an a-haulin some kernels of com out 
dere in the garden path. Now Miss Ant 
come from a mighty respectable f ambly, 
honey, an dis yere minute when Mistah 
Hop-o-grass wuz playin his handsomest, 
de ole lady's apron strings wuz wet wif 
sweat. 

When Mistah Hop-o-grass see Miss 
Ant doin f er-sure wuk at de corn kernels, 
up he fling hisself in de air, light like, 
an, **0h. Miss Ant," he say, **why you 
wuk dis fiije summer day? Don't you 
see de sun is shinin? Stop you wukin 
an play de flute wif me." 

**Yes, Mistah Hop-o-grass," say Miss 
Ant, **it is a mighty fine sunnner day, 
an dat 's de raisin I 's layin up corn for 
de cole winter day. ' ' 

When Miss Ant say dat, Mistah Hop- 



BRONZE AGE FABLES 273 

0-grass laugh and scrape his fiddle all de 
louder. 

So he go on playin all de summer. 
An Miss Ant she wuk, wuk, haulin craps 
into de Ant corn bins, milkin de ants' 
cows an tendin de Ants' chillun. She 
wus de busiest of all busy pussons. 

But bumbye summer got clean spent. 
Mastah Sunshine nigh forgot to get up 
in de mornin. De nights wuz long. 
Mistah Man an Miss Bee an Miss Ant 
had done stowed away all de craps, an 
Mistah an Miss Squirrel had put away 
all de nuts in dere pantry. 

Den ole Mam Blizzard turn herself 
loose, an Andrew Jackson Frost and 
Mastah Wind-o-Christmas got wukin, an 
de Blizzard chillun open up all dere ma's 
feather beds. Folks wuz a-shiverin, an 
out doors nuthin handy but ice an snow. 

When so cole it wuz, Mistah Hop-o- 
grass got de stummuck-hunger ; an he 
got it bad. He call to mind de warm 



274 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

summer day when lie wuz playin yonder 
in de garden an Miss Ant wuz layin away 
de kernels o corn. 

**Ali! hah!'' say he, an up he spring 
an off he go, hoppin over de snow to 
make de ole lady a visit. He think to 
get there bout de time she 'd be settin de 
table f er dinner. 

When Mistah Hop-o-grass come to 
Miss Ant's cabin, honey, he knock on de 
door, an he call, **How d'y do. Miss Ant? 
How is you fambly! Is dey enjoyin de 
corn you lay up?" 

Now dis yere Miss Ant wuz a mighty 
particular lady, honey. Dis day she wuz 
washin dQ floor more 'n usual scrump- 
tious, cause she wuz goin to have a quiltin 
bee dat afternoon. When Mistah Hop- 
o-grass knock an call out, up she got up 
from her bucket o suds, an she say, say 
she, ** Who's dar? Pears like dat 's 
you, Mistah Hop-o-grass. What is it 
yousayl Eh?" 

*' Please, Miss Ant," call Mistah Hop- 



BRONZE AGE FABLES 275 

0-grass from tother side de door, an his 
speakin wuz thin fer de hollow in his 
insides, **Miss Ant, I'se come to see yon. 
Won't you give me some corn to eatT' 

Miss Ant, she jus open de door a trifle 
to see whether Mistah Hop-o-grass wuz 
as thin as his speakin. De lady wuz a 
wishin she had more corn 'n just enough 
for her fambly. But she's obleeged to 
say, **What wuz you a doin all de sum- 
mer days, Mistah Hop-o-grass! What 
wuz you a doin? Ehr' 

*^0h, I 'se playin my harp an singin,'' 
say Mistah Hop-o-grass tryin to bend 
his cole legs an make a squeak on his 
strings, **I 'se playin my banjo an 
dancin. ' ' 

*^Yes, you 's playin," say Miss Ant. 
'^Settin on a high stalk o grass bendin 
in de wind, settin on a high stalk o grass 
bendin in de wind, spittin tobacco juice 
an playin jews' harp! Dat 's what 
you 's doin all summer long. Go way 
now, Mistah Hop-o-grass, go way. I'se 



276 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

not Wilkin to lay up corn f er such lazy 
coots as you. Keep on playin an dancin, 
Mistah Hop-o-grass, keep on playin till 
summer time come again.'' 

So den, honey, Miss Ant shet de door 
of her cabin an go on washin de floor f er 
de ladies' quiltin bee dat afternoon. 

Mistah Hop-o-grass wuz done flabber- 
gasted. He try to dance to warm his 
legs. An when night come he cuddle 
hisself in de middle of a sweetgum tree. 
But his sleep wuz poor his stummuck hol- 
lered so loud, an he could n't play his 
harp, nor sing, f er de pain dat wuz under 
his apron. 

Mistah -Hop-o-grass wuz like one o 
dese yere atheletes, honey, always buzzin 
bout his muscle, fer his health jus a 
jumpin an a jumpin, always buildin up 
plenty o leg, an neveh, in all his caper- 
cuttin, doin one stroke of wuk. He wuz, 
dis Mistah Hop-o-grass, always sittin on 
de stool o do-nothin. He spoil his muscle 



BRONZE AGE FABLES 277 

if he wuk. Den lie have nothin to buzz 
about. 

Seems like dere's two kinds of muscle, 
honey, de muscle what God's wuk makes, 
and de muscle dese yere atheletes gets 
by never wukin. 

If brevity is the soul of the fable, as 
Lessing reiterates, and its greatest orna- 
ment is to have none at all, the darkey 
mammies are astray. Whatever grace 
may be of their recounting, it is not con- 
cision. And if *^the object of the fable 
is the clear and forcible perception of 
some moral truth, ' ' as the German fabu- 
list further declares, possibly penning 
the stories of our mammies loses its 
main end and sets forth bad art. But 
to those who have listened to such tales 
their entrancing qualities never fail. 

What Lessing, 1729-1781, worked and 
talked against, and that more than thirty 
years before Goethe wrote his version of 



278 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

the mediaeval ^^Eeinecke Fuchs," was tlie 
endeavor of certain German writers of 
the eighteenth century to imitate the 
poetic and expansive and exuberantly 
vivacious narrative of the French 
La Fontaine, 1621-1695. The German 
would stem the sprightly, Frenchifying 
loquacity his brothers were essaying — 
which ill-fitted the temper of their 
Deutsch speech, to say nothing of fidelity 
to the severity and plainness of the 
Greek and Latin originals. 

Yet these German imitators, as La 
Fontaine before them, were conscious 
that the brief, unadorned narratives, the 
precision and conciseness of Babrius and 
Phaedrus and their later imitators, did 
not, and would not, please their eigh- 
teenth century generation. They saw 
that with French tact and French taste, 
and for a modern society demanding 
grace in its reading. La Fontaine had 
turned old fables, and the earlier French 
fabliaux, into the most popular poetry 



BRONZE AGE FABLES 279 

of his day. He had adapted the old tale 
of those people who were ancients to the 
ancients, and had fitted it and made it 
attractive to his generation, for all years 
of their life. To-day our conception is 
often La Fontaine's. 

This colloquy concerning tales old as 
the spirit of literature hardly necessi- 
tates inclusion of the famous quarrel 
which stirred Europe more than two 
hundred years ago — ^the strife hetween 
ancient and modern literary excellence, 
a reacting from all-compelling estimates 
of the Renaissance, a dispute which lives 
to us in remains such as Jonathan Swift's 
'^Battle of the Books." It may permit, 
however, the laying alongside diif erences 
between methods of ancient folk and a 
method of to-day. 

Literary history is a register of liter- 
ary forms meeting turns of view in 
human life. New environment demands 
and produces new and fresh expression. 
Every generation hungers for stories 



280 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

made for it, interpreting its view of life. 
It wants its tales told in its own way of 
thinking and feeling, limning in its 
chosen lines and colors. The ways Cax- 
ton, toward the end of the fifteenth cen- 
tury, and Cavalier L 'Estrange, at the 
end of the seventeenth, told our two 
fables in England, mark a considerable 
psychical difference. Changes in the 
affairs of a people, often results of war, 
evolve new desires and tastes. These 
literature and art spring forward to 
satisfy. For instance, in Prance, in the 
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the rise 
of orders neither priest nor noble, the 
coming of a part of the people to con- 
sciousness' of themselves and their 
worth, the social environment about 
them and the polity of their times — ^this 
caused the rapid development and spread 
of a gay and folk-humorous compound 
of the old fable and the novel of that 
day, the famous racial fabliaux, little 
realistic tales for common folk, brim- 



BRONZE AGE FABLES 281 

ming with their spirit, sharply jesting at 
pretensions of superiors and especially 
mocking at women. Literature had been 
a luxury. To read, or even to hear, the 
telling of many new stories had been 
most often, as in all feudal societies, for 
the favored of fortune. 

Another instance, and a notable one, 
of the evolution of new tastes and new 
demands of literature, is found in an 
effect of the French Eevolution. Half 
way between that great whirlwind and 
to-day, a learned Scotchman complained 
of the appeal to the people that books of 
his time made — ^the change in substance 
from the condensed, sedate and grave to 
lighter pabulum for the unexercised, less 
strengthened, less taste-developed mind. 
The weakness he lamented was in fact 
the endeavor of writers of the time to 
meet the populace which eighteenth 
century pronunciamentos for human 
rights had made readers. Those peo- 
ples' minds were the real thing his close 



282 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

thinking combated. What would he have 
said to the watery diffuseness of to-day ! 
— in our democratic land and times when 
even those who do not think practice the 
art of writing! 

Our ages-old fables go to the very core 
of human life and manners, as we said 
in the beginning — to life's primary 
points of view. They are ethical teach- 
ings in each language's genius, smack- 
ing of antiquity, preserving foundation 
morals, and bearing somewhat the force 
of a race's religion. In this fact, some- 
one has said, is the reason why they run 
through human history with such aston- 
ishing persistence, and, thousands or 
tens of thousands of years old, adapt 
themselves to all peoples and scenes, and 
evince the temperament of every people 
that essays their re-telling. In what- 
ever colonization a race undertakes go its 
version of its folk-tales. Like com- 
merce, each nation's fables — each na- 



BRONZE AGE FABLES 283 

tion's telling of the fables — follow its 
flag. 

Wandering stars in the literary 
heavens, someone has named the com- 
moner fables. It is true. They move 
in and out of the constellations of the 
literature of various peoples, smaller 
and less sparkling lights, but apparently 
as enduring, and sometimes shining with 
as clear a radiance as the very fixed and 
burning suns of literature. 



TOBACCO BATTERED AND 

PIPES SHATTERED BY 

JOSHUA SYLVESTER, 

PURITAN 



We Shoot at Manners, Wee would save the Men. 

"Tobacco Battered and The Pipes Shattered 
(about their Ears that idly Idolize so base and 
barbarous a Weed; at leastwise over-love so loath- 
some Vanitie ; ) by a Volley of Hot Shot thundered 
from Mount Helicon." 

Joshua Sylvesteb. 

A little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand 
. . . and it came to pass . . . that the heaven was 
black with clouds. 

/ Kings xviii, 44> 4^- 

Though many men crack 
Some of ale, some of sack 

And think they have reason to do it; 
Tobacco hath more 
That will never give o'er 

The honor they do unto it. 

"Wit's Recreation," 1650. 

Learn to smoke slow. The other grace is 
To keep your smoke from people's faces. 

Punch. 



TOBACCO BATTERED AND 

PIPES SHATTERED BY 

JOSHUA SYLVESTER, 

PURITAN 

Portuguese folks, wandering in Lis- 
bon gardens about the middle of tlie 
sixteenth century, gazed with curiosity 
upon an herb of which voyagers to the 
new-found land, America, brought 
strange tales. Sailors, for instance, such 
as were with Columbus, and later his- 
torians themselves, told how some of the 
new world people ** drank ^' the smoke 
of the outlandish growth, inhaling it 
through the nostrils by means of a hol- 
low, forked cane (shaped like the letter 
Y) or a straight reed called **tobago," 
while others rolling it in dried blades of 
maize, made a firebrand for the mouth. 
The leaves powdered, report also went, 

287 



288 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

they snuffed through a tube. Not one 
tribe had the voyagers found ignorant of 
such uses.^ 

The herb, the story went on, was ver- 
itably **holy,'' a cure-all for humanity's 
ills, a precious saver of life and an en- 
hancer of all that life may contain. So 
it happened that leaves and seeds of this 
**herba santa,'' this **herba panacea," 
Jean Nicot, French ambassador, took 
from Lisbon gardens, about the year 
1560, and sent them as rare and precious 
things to Catherine de Medici, queen- 
mother of the French court. Laden with 
mysterious messages, tobacco came for 
those times to be the miraculous remedy 
our mystified, hopeful human kind has 
ever been seeking and proclaiming ^ — 

1 When the Spaniards discovered the Aztecs of 
Mexico, they were taking snuff, and one of the 
Conquistadores tells how, after Montezuma had dined, 
fair women brought him painted and gilded tubes 
filled with liquid-amber and tobacco; and the mon- 
arch took the smoke into his mouth, and after he 
had done this a short time, fell asleep. 

2 Other growths have suffered, or enjoyed, like 
ascriptions. Asparagus, for instance, in what seems 



i 



"TOBACCO BATTERED" 289 

each discovery, whether of the elixir 
vitaB, elixir of life, of two, three or more 
centuries ago, or of ** vibrations" of to- 
day, reflecting its time's mental temper 
and science. 

At the time of this first bringing-over 
of tobacco, peoples of Europe did not 
know so much of the uses of primitive 
men as we to-day. They did not know 
that scented products of the earth — 
frankincense, cinnamon, balm, camphor, 
even the very weed to which they were 
ascribing wonderful cures — mankind had 
burned * * in offering an offering made by 
fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord, ' ' ^ 
to express their gratitude to the Good 
Giver of Harvests and beg for further 
blessings — they did not know that for 

to have been a revival of its use in Europe, for it 
was known to the ancient Greeks — asparagus is re- 
ferred to in an English play, "The Sparagus Garden," 
acted in Salisbury Court in 1635; "The vertues of 
the precious plant Asparagus, and what wonder it 
hath wrought in Burgundy, Almaine, Italy and 
Languedoc before the herborists had found the skill 
to plant it here." 
1 Numbers xv, 13. 



290 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

thousands of years, so far back we have 
no record of the beginning of the hom- 
age, men had offered burnt sacrifices to 
the Infinite Will compared with whose 
power they felt their own and their 
tribe's strength puny. Our European 
forebears were unaware, we say, that re- 
ligious feeling initiated tobacco smoking 
and founded reports of its healing 
strength; that the strange, red people 
across the sea smoked to, *^ incensed,'' 
the Great Spirit in fumes of their stone 
and cane pipes ; that they had faith that 
their medicine-man, by inhaling vapor of 
the smouldering leaves and falling in the 
mysterious ^ stupor it induced, gained 
counsel from a god, and when the people 
at large took it the dreams of their 
drunkenness were inspired. For with 
the Indians smoking served such great 
occasions as the worship of the Al- 
mighty, thanksgiving for harvests, and 
solemnities of declaring peace and war. 
Who brought the weed to our ances- 



"TOBACCO BATTERED" 291 

tors dwelling in England no man knows. 
One legend says Sir John Hawkins ^ bore 
it over, and that Captain Richard Gren- 
field and Sir Francis Drake were in Eng- 
land first planters. Another repeats 
how Sir Walter Raleigh initiated white 
men's smoking, and the tale stiffens its 
testimony by the well-known account — 
told also by the bye of others of that 
generation — how the knight's servant, 
one day finding him puffing at his pipe, 
cried out that his master was on fire and 
hastily doused him with ale. 

Another story attributes the carrying 
of tobacco to England to Ralph Lane, 
first governor of Virginia, in 1585. 
Early settlers of Virginia began planting 
the weed, records are clear. It soon be- 
came a chief product and even currency 

1 Sir John Hawkins in telling of his first voyage, 
18 Oct. 1564-20 Sept. 1565, reports how the natives 
"with a cane and a earthen cup in the end, with fire, 
and the dried herbs put together, do suck through 
the cane the smoke thereof; which smoke satisfieth 
their hunger, and therewith they live four or five 
days without meat or drink." 



292 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

of the colony. Such a value, and thus 
established, undoubtedly appealed to 
popular imagination. In England, at 
any rate, shortly after the introduction 
of tobacco smoking, demand for the leaf 
became great. The rich burned it in 
silver pipes ; the poor in nut shells with 
a straw stem. Not men alone, women, 
also, used it — and even children. 

Satirists of manners of those times 
refer to smoking as a fad for those who 
would do the last smart trick. Ben 
Jonson, for instance, in ^* Every Man 
in His Humor, ' ' a play produced in 1598, 
makes Cob say of Bobadil, *'He takes 
this same filthy, rougish tobacco"; and 
the braggart captain himself declares; 
**I have been in the Indies, where this 
herb grows, where neither myself, nor a 
dozen gentlemen of my knowledge, have 
received the taste of any other nutriment 
in the world, for the space of one-and- 
twenty weeks, but the fume of this 
simple only: therefore, it cannot be, but 



"TOBACCO BATTERED" 293 

'tis most divine. Further, take it in the 
nature, in the true kind ; so, it makes an 
antidote, . . . had you taken the most 
deadly poisonous plant in all Italy. . . . 
But I profess myself no quacksalver. 
Only this much; by Hercules, I do hold 
it, and will affirm it before any prince 
in Europe, to be the most sovereign and 
precious weed that ever the earth ten- 
dered to the use of man. ' ' 

.During the passing of these years 
while tobacco was making in England 
the conquest we have glanced, Joshua 
Sylvester had been growing to manhood, 
having ventured this life near the 
'* flowery meadows'' of Kent in 1563 — 
one year before Shakespeare came to 
earth. The seriousness of Joshua's 
career began early, for his parents died 
when he was of tender growth. But the 
family was of sterling stock, of the breed- 
ing that estimates knowledge and values 
trained thinking, and a maternal uncle, 
William Plumbe, saw to it that the child 



294 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

was well-nurtured and entered at ten 
under Master Saravia's instruction.^ 
Doubtless in those days, on benches of 
Saravia's school, where not to speak 
French was to earn the fooPs cap at 
meals, the boy gained foundation of the 
language, Englishing poems from which 
he was, in after years, to distinguish 
himself. 

Sylvester's lack of fortune led him, 
when still a youth, to test his luck in busi- 
ness. And '^Marchant Adventurer'' he 
described himself when he was grown 
to manhood — on the title page of his 

1 Adrian Saravia was a zealous worker in the re- 
formed churcl^ in Antwerp and Brussels until re- 
ligious troubles forced him to carry his family from 
the continent. He exemplified the notable fact that 
zeal in education and church reformation in those 
days went hand in hand. At Southampton he tem- 
porarily took up the work common to the intellectual 
exile, teaching, and became head of the grammar 
school into which boy Joshua Sylvester entered as 
a pupil. Afterwards the master went to the divinity 
chair at Leyden, and later returned to England to 
become one of the translators of the King James 
Bible, and, in the words of Izaak Walton, "the happy 
author of many learned tracts" and the "chief com- 
fort" of the life of Richard Hooker. 



"TOBACCO BATTERED" 295 

translations of French songs, 1591 and 
1592, while in his dedication of a second 
book loyalty to adventure prompted him 
to declare, ^*If thou find me poore in 
Poetrie, remember that is not my pro- 
fession." 

If poetry was at that time not Sylves- 
ter ^s profession, it affected his life more 
profoundly than mercantile enterprise. 
To understand his work we have now to 
go still further afield and speak of an 
older contemporary of his, Guillaume de 
Salluste du Bartas, a French poet, who/ 
during his life enjoyed a most extensive 
renown — whose zeal as a Huguenot, 
after he had left the Eoman communion, 
prompted him, in endeavor to bring to 
French people knowledge of characters 
of the Bible and the book's simple Chris- 
tian teachings, to extended labor on a 
series of poems. Most notable and com- 
plete of this epic was **La Semaine,'' 
or ^*The Week" of the creation of the 
world — which so pleased the imagination 



296 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

and taste of his day that it went through 
thirty editions in six years, and found 
translations into Latin, German, Span- 
ish, Italian and other languages; and 
into English by Joshua Sylvester under 
the title, **Du Bartas — ^his First Weeke; 
or, Birth of the World, wherein in Seven 
Dayes the glorious Worke of The Crea- 
tion is divinely handled.'' Eeligious 
sentiment was the soul of Du Bartas' 
poems, the intense, church-reformatory, 
Huguenot zeal then in France. 

In those days French verse moulded 
more easily than now into English song, 
and Sylvester leaped into fame as trans- 
lator of Du.Bartas' *^ Divine Weekes and 
Workes. " ' * He was admirably qualified 
for the task. No writer ever ventured to 
mould the language more freely to his 
will, coining words, when he did not find 
them ready minted for his use, introduc- 
ing new compounds, good, or bad, with 
equal hardiness. ... He poured out his 
verse with force as well as fluency. . . . 



"TOBACCO BATTERED" 297 

There was a sweetness in the general flow 
which deservedly entitled him'* ^ to An- 
thony a Wood's report that he was 
usually called by the poets of his time 
** Silver-tongued Sylvester.'' 

Through such a history Sylvester be- 
came the most popular poet of England 
in the reign of James the First. Un- 
doubtedly a reason of his popularity lay 
in the religious ardor that distinguished 
his works — the ardor which was in him 
by gift of nature and in the works he had 
most sympathetically translated. He 
was a Puritan. A famous favorer of 
Puritanism, Bishop Joseph Hall, bears 
out these conclusions of ours when ad- 
dressing Sylvester: 

* * I Dare conf esse, of Muses more than Nine, 
Nor list, nor can I envie none, but thine. 
She, drench 't alone in Sion's sacred Spring, 
Her Maker 's praise hath sweetly chose to sing, 
And reacheth nearest th' Angels notes above. 
Nor lists to sing, or Tales, or Wars, or Love." 

1 Quoted from Robert Southey. 



298 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

In citing one witness after anotlier, as 
we have just been doing, we are sensible 
that we run the risk of losing the outline 
of our subject in fragmentary detail. 
But in bringing back and brushing clear 
of the dust of centuries such a character 
as Sylvester's, one so little upborne and 
floated by light, histrionic qualities, one 
so sound, so profound in values, scraps 
of reports are most important. And 
they are all we have. We must labor as 
one who builds up a vase from unearthed 
shards and endeavors to decipher for- 
gotten legends painted upon them. Pen 
fragments of those who saw the man, 
and could be trusted to understand him, 
or those who heard at first hand of what 
he had done, are our best aids. 

This poet, Sylvester, wrote Anthony a 
Wood, **was much renowned by his most 
virtuous fame, and by those of his pro- 
fession, and such that admire poetry, 
esteemed a saint on earth, a true Na- 
thaniel, a Christian Israelite ... re- 



"TOBACCO BATTERED" 299 

ligious in himself and family and cour- 
ageous to withstand adversity.^' 

*^ Queen Elizabeth had a respect for 
Sylvester," further says Wood, *^King 
James a greater, and Prince Henry 
greatest of all. ' ' The prince was declar- 
edly *^ Puritanic" and made Sylvester 
his first poet-pensioner.^ Another of 
Sylvester's patrons and friends was 
Anthony Bacon, elder brother of the re- 
nowned Francis, and so close a follower 
of the Puritans that he lived long on the 
continent, a trusted servant of Elizabeth 
and on intimate terms with Beza and 
other Protestant leaders. 

Sylvester *'was very pious and sober" 
continues Wood. *'But this must be 

1 Preserved among the items of "anuyties" ex- 
pended at the instance of the prince is this: "Mr. 
Silvester at XX. 1, per ann. for twoe years XL." 
The poet testifies to this patronage in an elegy en- 
titled "Lachrymae Lachrymarum, or the Distilla- 
tion of Teares shede for the untymely Death of the 
Incomparable Prince Panaretus" (all-virtuous), writ- 
ten when the heir-apparent died in Nov. 1612; 

"This losse ( alas ! ) which unto all belongs. . . . 
But more than most, to Mee, that had no Prop 
But Henry's Hand, and, but for Him, no hope." 



300 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

known, that lie taking too much liberty 
upon him to correct the vices of the 
times . . . suffered several times some 
trouble, and thereupon it was, as I pre- 
sume, that his step-dame country did 
ungratefully cast him off and became 
most unkind to him." 

**At length this eminent poet,'' further 
says Wood, *'J. Sylvester (a name 
worthily dear to the age he lived in) 
died at Middleburg in Zeland on the 28th 
of Sept., 1618, aged fifty-five; and had 
this epitaph following made on him by 
his great admirer, Joh. Vicars ^ . . . 

1 This John Vicars may be he of whom Wood bears 
testimony, "he was a most admirable linguist, and 
the best for the oriental tongues in his time." The 
name, John Vicars, appears, it has been noted, in 
original proposals for printing the Polyglot Bible, 
as one of the persons to prepare copy, correct the 
press and otherwise manage that work. 

Vicars also wrote other verses on Sylvester; 
"Whose Life and Labours have few Equalls knowne, 
Whose Saered-Layes his Browes with Bayes have 

bound, 
And, Him, his Ages Poet-Laureate crowned, 
Whom Envy (scarce) could hate; Whom All admired, 
Who Liv'd beloved and a Saint expired." 



"TOBACCO BATTERED" 301 

but I think it was not put over his 
grave": 

*'Here lyes (Death's too-rich Prize) the Corps 

interred 
Of Joshua Sylvester, Du Bartas Peer : 
A Man of Arts best Parts, to God, man, deer ; 
In foremost Rank of Poets best preferred." ^ 

In a volume of Sylvester's works 
printed a few years after his death, the 
printer-publisher speaks of * * the issue of 

1 Death found Sylvester, however, still destined 
to do notable work. His strength in translating 
Du Bartas, and venturing to mould English freely, 
in all probability incited Milton to his great story. 
Milton was ten when Sylvester died. The older poet's 
couplets must have sung appealingly to the finely 
tuned ear of the boy — "a poet at ten," says John 
Aubrey. The very printing of Sylvester's transla- 
tion of Du Bartas, editions appearing through years, 
was not far from where Milton dwelt with his father. 
If we lay Sylvester's and Milton's work alongside, 
we can not escape conclusions that the scriptural 
themes Sylvester had sung in English couplets and 
placed before Milton when a boy — for which, too, the 
older poet had helped prepare and educate public 
taste — we can not escape conclusion that the intense 
conviction, the imagination and ambition of Milton 
matured, consciously seized for subject of his song 
what had been most popular and applauded in his 
boyhood. 



302 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

that divine Wif both challenging time 
and outwearing it. And more than one 
hundred and sixty years later, in 1796, 
The Gentleman's Magazine tells that 
Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas' 
'* Divine Weekes and Workes" was more 
common than any volume of English 
verse of the first part of the seventeenth 
century. Strange! you exclaim. And 
why did the confessedly most popular 
poet of the first half of the seventeenth 
century so wholly perish in his appeal 
to later generations 1 One reason is that 
Milton's genius had outshone the older 
man's. Another reason lies in reactions 
in politics ajid in religious and ethical 
ideals. These often direct literary taste. 
We have Anthony a Wood dwelling on 
Sylvester's piety and sobriety of mind — 
saying he was inflamed with that reli- 
gious ardor which carries its principles 
into affairs of life — ** taking liberty upon 
him to correct the vices of the times . . . 
he suffered trouble. ' ' Intense conviction 



"TOBACCO BATTERED" 303 

and stalwart adherence to conviction 
were not uncommon in practices of his 
time. But later Stuarts made them un- 
fashionable and nullified by ridicule. 
Stuart influence debased English ethical 
estimates ; effects of which influence long 
survived the Stuarts' hold upon the Eng- 
lish throne. Dryden, who in earlier 
years expressed admiration for Sylves- 
ter, echoes the change when, after ad- 
dressing himself to royal will, he termed 
Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas 
** abominable fustian." ^ 

1 Ben Jonson's sonnet "To Mr. Joshus Silvester" 
may be here worth quoting; 

"If to admire were to commend, my praise 
Might then both thee, thy work and merit raise: 
But as it is, (the child of ignorance. 
And utter stranger to all air of France,) 
How can I speak of thy great pains, but err? 
Since they can only judge, that can confer. 
Behold! the reverend shade of Bartas stands 
Before my thought, and, in thy right, commands 
That to the world I publish for him, this: 
Bartas doth wish thy English now were his. 
So well in that are his inventions wrought, 
As his will now be the translation thought. 
Thine the original; and France shall boast. 
No more those maiden glories she hath lost. 



304 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

Sylvester had, we say, after the man- 
ner of Puritans, carried his religious 
ardor and its supporting principles into 
everyday affairs of life. His work evi- 
dences this. For instance, at the end of 
his laborious translation of Du Bartas' 
extended works are subscribed these 
intense lines translated from the fifth of 
the Quadrains of Pibrac : 

''Say not My Hand This Work to End hath 

brought, 
Nor, This my Virtue hath attained to : 
Say rather thus. This God by mee hath 

wrought, 
GOD^S Author of the little Good I doe.'' 

A characteristic religious ardor we 
find in Sylvester's independent poems. 
It warms in his *' All's not Gold that 
Glisters" to a large and beautiful defi- 
nition of religion : 

''Reverend RELIGION, where 's the heart 
That entertaines thee as thou art, 
Sincerely, for thine own respect? 



"TOBACCO BATTERED" 305 

Where is the Minde, Where is the Man, 
May right be call'd a Christian; 
Not formall, but in true effect? 

''Who, fixing all his Faith and Hope 
On God alone, from sacred Scope 

Of his pure Statutes will not stray ; 
Who comes in Zeal and Humblenesse, 
With true and hearty Singlenesse, 

Willing to walk the perfect Way: 

''Who loves, with all his Soule and Minde, 
Almighty God, All-Wise, AU-kinde, 

All- whole, All-Holy, All-sufficing: 
Who but One onely God adores 
(Though Tyrants rage, and Satan rores) 

Without digressing, or disguising: 

"Who God's due Honour hath not given 
To Other things, in Earth or Heav'n; 

But bow'd and vow'd to Him alone; 
Him onely serv'd with filiall Awe, 
Pleas 'd and delighted in his Law, 

Discoursing Day and Night thereon: 

"Not, not for Forme, or Fashion sake, 
Or, for a Time, a Show to make. 
Others the better to beguile : 



306 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

Nor it, in Jest, to wrest or cite; 
But in his heart it deep to write, 
And work it with his hands the-while; 

*' Loving his neighbour as himself e. 
Sharing to him his Power, his Pelfe, 

His Counsel, Comforts, Coats and Cates : 
Doing in all things to his Brother, 
But as Himselfe would wish from Other, 

Not Offring Other what hee hates : 

*' Whose Heart, inclin'd as doth behove-it, 
Unlawfully doth nothing covet 

(To any an offence to offer) : 
But, just and gentle towards all, 
Would rather (unto great, or small) 

Than doe one wrong, an hundred suffer: 

**Not thirsting Others Land or Life; 
Nor neighing after Maid or Wife ; 

Nor ayming any Injury ; 
Neither of polling, nor of pilling. 
Neither of cursing, nor of killing. 

Neither of Fraud, nor Forgerie; 

*^But will confess, if he offend. 
Relent, Repent, and soon amend, 
And timely render Satisfaction. 



"TOBACCO BATTERED" 307 

Sure, his religion is not f ained, 
Who doth and hath him Thus demeaned ; 
Ay, deadly hating Evill-action. 

Sylvester's profound religious feeling 
again rises to rolling organ tones at the 
end of the poet's ^'Little Bartas'*: 

*'Supernall Lord, Eternal King of Kings, 
Maker, Maintainer, Mover of all things, 
How infinite ! How excellently rare ! 
How absolute ! Thy works, Thy wonders are 1 
How much their knowledge is to be desir 'd ! 
How THOU, in all, to be of all admir'd !" 

Eeligion and reformatory zeal inflamed 
Sylvester. That is clear. Like senti- 
ments must have prompted his great skit 
on tobacco. Smoking, we have seen, had 
become fashionable in England during 
the years Sylvester was schooling and 
merchant-adventuring. To smoke was 
to do the last smart trick; and men and 
women and children essayed it. Then, 
too, there were shallow-brained, solemn- 
faced people proclaiming the weed's 



308 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

curative powers. Dramatists Dekker, 
Thomas Heywood and others, and also 
Edmund Spenser in his ** Faerie Queen," 
had referred to the herb — oftenest in 
laudation. Sir John Beaumont when 
only nineteen, 1602, had told in even 
couplets of **The Metamorphosis of To- 
bacco," addressing his ** loving friend 
Master Michael Drayton": 

**Let me the sound of great Tabaccoes praise 
A pitch above those love-sicke Poets raise : 
Let me adore with my thrice-happie pen 
The sweete and sole delight of mortall men, 
The cornu-copia of all earthly pleasure, 
Where bank-rupt Nature hath consumed her 

treasure ! 
A worthie plant springing from Floraes hand, 
The blessed offspring of an uncouth land ! 
Breath-giving herbe ! none others I invoke 
To help me paint the praise of sugred smoke. ' ' 

Such were early praises of tobacco. 
But already reaction had set in. Oppo- 
sition to the ** sugred smoke" devel- 
oped, and a stand against '*this imita- 



"TOBACCO BATTERED" 309 

tion of the manners of savage people." 
William Camden voiced this in saying 
that by smoking English folk would de- 
generate — ^^Anglorum corpora in bar- 
barorum degenerasse videantur." And 
outside England, in other countries, 
hatred of tobacco was prohibiting it as an 
abomination ; a pope or two even issuing 
decrees against its use in churches. The 
wheel of fortune had turned. The so- 
called first smoker in England, Sir 
Walter Ealeigh, was himself finally pass- 
ing sombre years in prison under sen- 
tence of death for conspiracy.^ 

This evolving antagonism found its 
first notable outbreak in **A Counter- 
Blaste to Tobacco ' ' published in the year 
1604, and written by the King of Eng- 

1 James' hatred of tobacco, it has been said, has- 
tened Raleigh's execution in 1618. Raleigh "hoped 
to perswade the world that he dyed an innocent 
man,'* wrote Dr. Robert Tounson, Dean of West- 
minster, having been commanded by Lords of 
the Council "to sett downe the manner of his death" ; 
that day Raleigh "eate his breakfast hertily, and 
tooke tobacco." 



310 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

land. James' **Blaste" dimmed some- 
what of the glorious story enveloping 
the **herba panacea" — even if it fanned 
pipes to flame in protest. The king not 
only wrote his great skit, he otherwise 
emphasized his aversion by imposing on 
tobacco a heavy tax, and, when English 
farmers began to grow the herb, added 
a law against **to misuse and misemploy 
the soil of this fruitful kingdom. ' ' 

**Our Peace hath bred wealth:"^ 
wrote James: **And Peace and wealth 
hath brought foorth a generall sluggish- 
nesse, which makes us wallow in all sorts 
of idle delights, and soft delicacies. . . . 
There cannot be a more base, and yet 
hurtfuU corruption in a Countrey, then 
is the vile use (or other abuse) of taking 
Tobacco." 

** Omnipotent power of Tobacco!" 
. . . **Many in this kingdom have had 
such a continuall use of taking this un- 

1 Spelling and capitals in these excerpts follow an 
old edition. 



"TOBACCO BATTERED'* 311 

saverie smoke, as now they are not able 
to forbeare the same, no more than an 
olde drunkard can abide to be long sober, 
without falling into an incurable weak- 
nesse and evill constitution. ... It is, 
as you use or rather abuse it, a branche 
of the sinne of drunkenesse. . . . You 
are not able to ride or walke the journey 
of a Jewes Sabboth, but you must have 
a reekie cole brought you from the next 
poore house to kindle your Tobacco 
with. . . . 

**And for the vanities committed in 
this filthie custome, is it not both great 
vanitie and uncleanenesse, that at the 
table, a place of respect, of cleanlinesse, 
of modestie, men should not be ashamed, 
to sit tossing Tobacco pipes, and puffing 
of the smoke of Tobacco one to another, 
making the filthie smoke and stinke 
thereof, to exhale athwart the dishes, and 
infect the aire, when very often, men 
that aborrre it are at their repast? . . . 

'^And is it not a great vanitie, that a 



312 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

man cannot heartily welcome his friend 
now, but straight they must bee in hand 
with Tobacco? ... he that will' refuse 
to take a pipe of Tobacco among his 
fellowes ... is accounted peevish and 
no good company, even as they doe with 
tippeling in the cold Easterne Coun- 
tries. . . . 

*^ Moreover, which is great iniquitie, 
and against all humanitie, the husband 
shall not bee ashamed, to reduce thereby 
his delicate, wholesome, and cleane com- 
plexioned wife, to that extremitie, that 
either shee must also corrupt her sweete 
breath therewith, or else resolve to live 
in a perpetuall stinking torment. ' ' 

Tobacco-smoking, declared King 
James, is **a custome lothsome to the 
eye, hatefuU to the Nose, harmfuU to the 
braine, dangerous to the Lungs, . . . and 
in the blacke stinking fume thereof, 
neerest resembling the horrible Stigian 
smoke of the pit that is bottomlesse. " 

*^Such is the force of that naturall 



"TOBACCO BATTERED" 313 

Self-love in every one of us," continued 
the King, *^and such is the corruption 
of envie bred in the brest of every one, 
as we cannot be content unlesse we 
imitate everything that our f ellowes doe, 
and soe proove ourselves capable of 
everything whereof they are capable, 
like Apes, counterfeiting the maners of 
others, to our owne destruction . . . the 
generall good liking and imbracing of 
this foolish custome, doeth but onely pro- 
ceede from that affectation of noveltie, 
and popular errour." 

King James made plain the royal de- 
testation of tobacco. A simple Puritan 
subject of his, Joshua Sylvester, had like 
hatred of ^ ^ the soveraine weede,' ' and he, 
too, put forth a protest in *^ Tobacco 
Battered and The Pipes Shattered 
(about their Ears that idly Idolize so 
base and barbarous a Weed; at least- 
wise over-love so loathsome Vanitie;) by 
a Volley of Hot Shot thundered from 
Mount Helicon. '* When the poem was 



314 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

published is not clear. Lines in it would 
show that it followed James' ^^Counter- 
Blaste'': 

''When Our Alcides (though at Peace with 

men, 
At War with Vices) as His armed Pen, . . . 
Hath, as with Arrowes, from His sacred Sides, 
All-ready chac't These stinking Stympha- 

lides". . .^ 

Sylvester's seizure by intense convic- 
tion and his courage in endeavoring to 
correct vices of his time, his profound 
religious feeling — these characteristics 
of his must now have buoyed him. Ex- 
cesses in what he termed a lately im- 
ported custom of savages, self-indul- 
gences that led his brothers to destruc- 
tion, stirred him. **We Shoot at Man- 
ners," he cried, **Wee would save the 

1 The volumea from which these lines, the fore- 
going quotations from Sylvester, and the excerpts 
following were made, were printed in London in 
1633 and 1641. Their frequent italics are omitted, 
but spelling and capitals are kept; and punctua- 
tion, so far as possible. 



"TOBACCO BATTERED" 315 

Men.'' Those who read the poem can 
not doubt the writer's moral earnestness, 
his genuine and devoted ardor to work 
reform. His ethics are undeniably sin- 
cere and lofty. 

To-day our first thought may be that 
the wit of the verse is stronger than we, 
ourselves, discover. Yet such was in 
the mouth, and flowed in the ink, of 
Marlowe, Green, Shakespeare, Ben Jon- 
son, Drayton. Those people talked 
straight forward. They were not apt at 
vague abstractions and at calling up a 
haze. They did not use analytic, scien- 
tific, Greek and Latin words, in which 
practical, racy thought is often fog- 
bound to-day. Terse, homely phrase, 
smacking of the soil, was their wont. In 
such Sylvester makes clear his message. 
A native quaintness and individual tang 
are in every couplet. Indulging whim- 
sicalities, his fantasy takes on added 
warmth and his spirit bears fresh evi- 
dence of conviction. 



316 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

Growls of this stern old English Puri- 
tan appeal with double force to those of 
us of to-day who believe in our right not 
to be smoked — who believe in the per- 
sonal liberty which refuses to permit 
another to force stale, nauseating smoke 
into mouths and lungs clean and inno- 
cent of their use. To-day an American 
citizen walking our streets, and even in 
our parks, our post-offices and other 
public buildings, has small chance for 
sanitary clear air. A misguided boy is 
apt to be before him puffing at a poison- 
loaded cigarette, or, at his hand an alien 
with a pipe or *^ brand," the offence of 
which smells to heaven. 

** Needs must I band against the needless 
Use 
Of Don Tobacco and his f oule abuse : 
Which (though in Inde it be an Herbe indeed) 
In Europe is no better than a Weed ; 
Which, to their Idols, Pagans sacrifice, 
And Christians (heer) doe wel-nigh Idolize: 
Which taking, Heathens to the Divels bow 



"TOBACCO BATTERED" 317 

Their Bodies ; Christians even their Soules do 

vow. . . . 
Two smoakie Engines, in this latter Age 
(Satans short Circuit; the more sharp his 

rage.) 
Have been invented by too-wanted "Wit, 
Or rather, vented from th' Infernall Pit, 
Guns and Tobacco-pipes, with Fire and 

Smoak ; 
(At least) a Third part of Mankind to choak: 
(Which happely, th' Apocalyps fore-told) 
Yet of the Two, Wee may (think I) be bold, 
In som respects, to think the Last, the Worst, 
(How-ever Both in their Effects accurst.) 
For, Guns shoot from-ward, only at their 

Foen; 
Tobacco-Pipes, home-ward, into their Owne 
(When, for the Touch-hole, firing the wrong 

end, 
Into our Selves the Poysons force wee send) ; 
Those, in the Field, in brave and hostile 

manner ; 
These, Cowardly, under a Covert Banner : 
Those, with Defiance, in a Threatful Terror; 
These, with Affiance, in a wilfuU Error: 
Those (though loud roaring, goaring deep, 

quick ridding) 



318 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

These, stilly stealing, longer Languors breed- 
ing; 

Those, full of pain (perhaps) and fell de- 
spight: 

These, with false Pleasure, and a seem-delight 

(As Cats with Mice, Spiders with Flies) full 
rife. 

Pipe-playing, dallying, and deluding Life. 

/'Who would not wonder, in these Sunny- 
Dayes 

(So bright illightned with the Gospel's 
Rayes) 

Whence so much Smoak, and deadly Vapours 
com, 

To dim and damne so much of Christendome ? 

But, wee must ponder too. These dales are 
ThosQ 

Wherein the Divell was to be let lose ; 

And yawning broad Gate of that black Abyss 

To be set ope, whose bottom bound-lesse is ; 

That Satan, destin'd, evermore to dwell 

In Smoakie Fornace of that darkesom Cell, 

In Smoak and darkness, might inure and 
train 

His Own deer Minions, while they heer re- 
main. . . . 



"TOBACCO BATTERED" 319 

**Then, in Despite, who-ever dare say Nay, 
Tobacconists, keep-on your course : you may, 
If you continue in your Smoakie Ure, 
The better far Hell's sulph'ry Smoak endure ; 
And heerin (as in All your other Evill) 
Grow neerer still and liker to the Divell : 
Save that the Divell (if hee could revoke) 
Would flee from filthy and unhealthy Smoak : 
Wherein (cast out of Heave 'n for hellish 

pride) 
Unwilling Hee, and forced, doth abide: 
Which, heerin worse than hee (the worst of 

111) 
You long-for, lust-for, ly-for, dy-for still. 
For, as the Salamander lives in Fire, 
You live in smoak, and without smoak expire. 

'* Should it be question 'd (as right well it 

may) 
Whether Discovery of America 
That New-Found World, have yeelded to our 

Old 
More Hurt or Good: Till fuller Answer 

should 
Decide the Doubt, and quite determine it, 
Thus for the present might wee answer 

fit: . . . 



320 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

'^But true it is, wee had this Trash of 
Theirs, 

Only in Barter of our broken Wares. 

Ours, for the most part, carried out but sin; 

And, for the most part, brought but Ven- 
geance in : . . . 

They carried Avarice, and Gold they got : 

They carried Bacchus and Tobacco brought. 

Alas, poor Indians! that, but English, None 

Could put them down in their owne Trade 
alone! . . . 

''Of All the Plants that Tellus bosom 
yeelds, 

[n groves, glades, gardens, marshes, moun- 
tains, fields, 

None so pernicious to Man's Life in knowne, 

As is Tobacco, saving Hemp alone. 

Betwixt which Two there seems great Sym- 
pathy 

To ruinate poor Adam's Progeny: 

For, in them Both, a strangling vertue note, 

And both of them doe work upon the Throte ; 

The one, within it ; and without, the other ; 

And th' one prepareth Work unto the tother. 

For There doe meet (I meen at Gail and Gal- 
lowes) 



"TOBACCO BATTERED" 321 

More of these beastly, base Tobacco-Fel- 

lowes, . . . 
Sith 'tis their common Lot (so double- 

choaked) 
Just Bacon-like, to be hang'd up and smoaked : 
A Destiny, as proper to befall 
To morall Swine, as to Swine naturall. 

''Now, my first Puff shall but repell th' ill 
favour 

Of Place and Persons (of debauscht behav- 
iour) 

"Where 'tis most frequent : Second, shew you 
will, 

How little Good it doth: Third, how great 
111. 

'Tis vented most in Taverns, Tippling-cots, 

To Ruffians, Roarers, Tipsie-Tostie Pots; 

Whose Custom is, between the Pipe and Pot, 

(Th' one Cold and Moist, the other dry and 
Hot) 

To skirmish so (like Sword and Dagger- 
fight) 

That 'tis not easie to determine right. 

Which of their Weapons hath the Conquest 
got 

Over their Wits; the Pipe, or else the Pot. 



322 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

Yet 'tis apparent, and by proof express, 
Both stab and Wound the Brain with Drunk- 
enness : 
For even the Derivation of the Name 
Seems to allude and to include the same : 
Tobacco, as rw paKxoi, one would say ; 
To (Cup-god) Bacchus dedicated ay. . . . 

''0 Great Tobacco! greater than Great 

Can, 
Great Turke, Great Tartar, or Great Tam- 

berlan ! 
With Vulturs wings Thou haste (and swifter 

yet 
Than an Hungarian Ague, English Sweat) 
Through all Degrees, flown far, nigh, up and 

down; 
From court to cart; from Count to country 

Clown, 
Not scorning Scullions, Coblers, Colliers, 
Jakes-farmers, Fidlers, Ostlers, Oysterers, 
Roagues, Gypsies, Players Pandars, Punks, 

and All 
What common Scums, in common-Sewers fall. 
For, all, as Vassals, at thy beck are bent, 
And breathe by Thee, as their new Element. 
Which well may prove thy Monarchy the 

Greater ; 



"TOBACCO BATTERED" 323 

Yet prove not Thee to be a whit the better; 
But rather Worse: for, Hell's wide-open Road 
Is easiest found, and by the Most still 
trod! . . . 
* ' If then Tobaceoning be good : How is 't, 
That lewdest, loosest, basest, foolishest, 
The most unthrifty, most intemperate. 
Most vitious, most debauscht, most desperate, 
Pursue it most : The Wisest and the Best 
Abhor it, shun it, flee it, as the Pest. . . . 

*'My second Puff, is Proof How little Good 
This Smoak hath don (that ever heer I cou'd) . 
For, first, there's none that takes Tobacco 

most. 
Most usually, most earnestly can boast 
That the excessive and continuall use - 
Of this dry Suck-at ever did produce 
Him any Good, Civill, or Naturall, 
Or Morall Good, or Artificiall : 
Unless perhaps they will alledge, it drawes 
Away the 111 which still it Self doth cause. 
Which course (meethinks) I can not liken bet- 
ter 
Than to an Usurer's kindness to his Debter; 
Who under shew of lending, still subtracts 
The Debters Owne, and then his own exacts; 
Till at the last hee utterly confound-him. 



324 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

Or leave him worse and weaker than he f ound- 
him. ... 

**My Third and last Puff points at the great 

Evill 
This noisom Vapour works through wily 

divell ; 
If we may judge : if knowledge may be had 
By their Effects, how things be good or 

bad. . . . 
For, first of all, it falls on his Good-name; 
And so be-smears, and so be-smoaks the same, 
That never after scarce discerned is 't. 
Rare good Report of a Tobacconist: . . . 

*'For, if a Swearer or a Swaggerer, 
A Drunkard, Dicer, or Adulterer, 
Prove a Tobbacconist, it is not much: 
'Tis sutable, 'tis well beseeming Such : . . . 

"But, let it be of any truly said, 
Hee's great, religious, learned, wise or staid; 
But hee is lately turn'd Tobacconist: 
0! what a Blur! what an Abatement is 

't! . . . 

'*It ill beseems a Church, CoUedge or Court, 
Or any place of any civill sort : 



"TOBACCO BATTERED'* 325 

It fits Blasphemers, Euffians, Atheists, 
Dam'd Libertines, to be Tobacconists: 
Not Magistrates, not Ministers, not SehoUers, 
(Who are, or should be, sins severe Comptrol- 
lers) 
Nor any wise and sober personage, 
Of Gravity, of Honesty, of Age. . . . 

'*Next the Good-name, now let the Body 
show 
What wrongs to it from our Tobacco flow : 
For, as That is Man's baser Part indeed. 
It is most basely handled by this Weed. . . . 

**But the most certain and apparent 111 
Is an 111 Habit which doth haunt them still ; 
Transforming Nature from her native Mould : 
For, Custom wee another Nature hold. 
And this vile Custom is so violent, 
And holds his Customers at such a Bent, 
That tho thereby more hurt than good they 

doubt : 
To die for it, they can not live without. . . . 
Yet doth the Custom (as wee likewise finde) 
Dis-nerve the Bodie, and dis-apt the Mind. 

'* First, in the Intellect, it d' outs the Light, 
Darkens the House, th' understandings 
Sight; . . . 



326 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

'*Next it decayes and mars the Memorie, 
And brings it to strange Imbeeillitie. . . . 

*' Touching th' Affections, they are tyr'd no 

lesse 
By this fell Tyrants insolent Excesse : . . . 
Makes men more sudden, and more heed-less 

heady. 
More sullen sour, more stubbornely-unsteady, 
More apt to wrath, to wrangle, and to braule ; 
To give and take a Great offence, for 

Small. . . . 

''But, if they say, that sometimes, taking it, 
The Minde is fre'ed from some instant Fit 
Of Anger, Grief e, or Feare; Experience tells 
It is but like some of our Tooth-ake Spells, 
Which for the present seem to ease the Pain, 
But after, double it with more Rage again; 
Because a little, for the time, it drawes, 
But leaves behinde the very Root and Cause. 

** Lastly, the Conscience (as it is the best) 
This Indian Weed doth most of all molest ; 
Loading it daily with such Weight of Sin, 
Whereof the least shall at the last com-in 
To strict Account : the Losse of precious hours 
Neglect of God, of Good, of Us, of Ours : 



"TOBACCO BATTERED" 327 

Our ill Example, prodigall Excess, 

Vain words, vain Oaths, Dice, Daring, Drunk- 
enness, 

Sloath, Jesting, Scoffing, turning Night to 
Day, 

And Day to Night ; Disorder, Disaray ; 

Places of Scorn and public Scandall hanting ; 

Persons of base and beastly Life frequent- 
ing. . . . 

This is the Eendez-vous, These are the Lists, 

Where doe encounter most Tobacconists. . . . 

*'The Last and least of all ToBAcco-harms, 
Is to the Purse : which yet it so becharms. 
That Juggler-like it jests-out all the Pelf, 
And makes a Man a Pick-purse to him- 
selfe. . . . 

*'How juster will the Heav'nly God 
Th' Eternall, punish with infernall Rod: 
In Hell dark Fomace (with black Fumes to 

choak) 
Those, that on Earth will still offend in 

Smoak? 
Offend their Friends, with a Most un-Respect : 
Offend "Wives and Children, with Neglect : 
Offend the Eyes, with foule and loathsom 

spawlings : 



328 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 

Offend the Nose, with filthy Fumes exhalings : 
Offend the Eares, with loud lewd Execrations : 
Offend the Mouth, with ugly Excreations : 
Offend the Sense, with stupefying Sense: 
Offend the Weake, to follow their Offence : 
Offend the Body, and offend the Minde : 
Offend the Conscience in a fearefuU kinde. 
Offend their Baptisme, and their Second 

Birth : 
Offend the Majestic of Heaven and Earth. 

''Woe to the World because of such Of- 
fences ; 
So voluntaire, so voyd of all pretences 
Of all Excuse (save Fashion, Custome, Will) 
In so apparent, proved, granted, 111. 
Woe, woe to them by Whom Offences come; 
So scandalous to All our Christendom." 
• 



FINIS 



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